5 Real Estate Take-Aways from PubCon Vegas 2009- Matt Cutts on "What Has Google Done for Users Lately?"

One of the best sessions I attended at PubCon 2009 Las Vegas was Search Engines and Webmasters-The Smackdown.  It was a session featuring Matt Cutts of Google and Nathan Buggia of Bing discussing their views of search and their companies unique offerings in the search space.  I was very interested in Buggia's confirmation that Bing is committed to capturing 51% of the search space and the reaction from SEO professionals in the room which seemed happy for the competition. 

My main takeaways from the session were from Cutt's presentation on "What Has Google Done For Users Lately?" as it is the search engine that currently has 66.1% share of searches in the U.S. 

Matt Cutts ran down a list of at least 10-12 Google offerings, but I am going to pare it down to those tools I believe most pertinent to individual real estate professionals and real estate companies.

Here are my 5 real estate take-aways from Pubcon Vegas 2009- Matt Cutts on What Has Google Done for you Lately?

 

1.  Google Chrome- This is Google's browser offering.  I have it installed on my desktop and though I still prefer Firefox, I like Chrome when speed is a necessity.

I use Google Chrome when I need to search through several websites.

2.  Google Wave- A new way to collaborate and make better sense of the increasing inefficiency of email by communicating in real time.  I am just jumping into Wave now, but Cheryl Johnson has been posting on Wave and is great at giving clear, easy to follow tech tutorials.

3.  Google Social Search-Taps into the power of your network to keep track of what they are doing, researching, reading, and posting online.  One really cool bonus is if you do opt to try social search you can search by your name or business to find information on the last time Google Indexed your stuff. Cutts recommended this over the popular search using "site:____".  I logged into social search and found it be very useful for just this feature alone.  If you do not want people to see what websites you have searched at any moment you can log out.

4.  Google Speed Test- Please take note this one is important.  The update for Google's Algorithms, Caffeine, will be coming after the Holidays.  Cutts said in the session at PubCon that the speed of your website might be an important factor in this update (hint,hint) because search users care about speed.  Of the 200 factors that Google uses to index and rank for SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) Speed isn't currently a factor.  You can test your website's speed with Google's Speed Test. 

Don't forget to test the speed of your blog too.

5.  Google Dashboard- I'm gonna wrap with this one.  When Cutts asked the question "How many people feel concerned about all of the information Google has on them?" a good 50% of the audience's hands went up including mine along with a laugh at the results and the question. 

Here is one example. If you've ever used Gmail you will notice that the ads that show up on the right hand side have to do directly with the content in the body of your emails.  If you want to know what information Google has been collecting on you Google has created a dashboard.  It was more than interesting to see this information and I will be checking out my dashboard weekly now.

As a side note, Chris Olsen's post, "Google Godzilla-Sized Eyeballs Will Soon be 360x360x360" discusses the increasing allure and possible bait of the worldwide web with its leader Google.  It's a good read and topic for discussion.

The release of your information on the Internet should at some point give you pause for thought.


Here is a copy of Matt Cutts full presentation from PubCon Vegas 2009.

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this post then check out another PubCon Lesson,

Lessons from PubCon Vegas 2009:  It's Time to Think About Local Search and How You Can Make an Impact Online

 

 

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Rebecca D. Levinson is a real estate marketing consultant with 17 years of experience serving real estate industry professionals.

If you need assistance with online marketing, offline marketing, social networking, or blogging contact Rebecca D. Levinson at #262-203-5231 or email rebecca@bloggingintherain.com.