Google Customer Support Surprise: Phone Reps Handling 10,000 Calls A Week From 60 Countries

Google has long received mixed-to-negative criticism for its customer service — or lack thereof. But Francoise Brougher is changing all that. Perhaps the least well-known senior executive outside Google, the VP of Global Advertising and Product Operations has quietly built an impressive telephone customer support organization for Google AdWords advertisers.

Telephone support for AdWords was first announced earlier this year in April and it saw some coverage. However since that time Google has been silent about it.

A Thousand Reps Servicing 60 Countries

Google has invested heavily in building an organization that can address calls from 60 countries around the world. The company has more than 1,000 Google-employed customer service people divided between email and phone support. The phone reps are now handling “more than 10,000 calls a week,” according to Brougher. The reps are located in several regional call centers around the world.

Google is learning a great deal about its customers through these phone calls. This may seem an obvious point but it’s giving Google more insight into advertiser needs and issues than in the past. And many of these insights can be used by marketing and product development people. This offers a kind of virtuous cycle or loop between customer care and marketing and product development. Too many companies treat their customer care organizations purely as a “cost center” and fail to see customer service as a strategic asset with a wide range of organizational benefits.

Brougher understands very clearly the benefit of this organization for Google. She lobbied the executive team to make significant investments up front that now appear to be paying off.

“People Like to Talk”

One of the surprises for Google is the nature of the inquiries it’s receiving on the phone. Google has had email-based support for AdWords for a long time but the calls coming in are qualitatively different. Calls are more expansive, friendly and less pointed. “People like to talk,” Brougher joked. Beyond this, she explained, calls coming from different countries are also quite different from one another, reflecting various cultural differences.

Google is encountering numerous first time small business advertisers who want education and help. (Roughly 20 percent of the calls Google is receiving are from new advertisers.) With telephone calls Google is in a much better position to provide small business support than with email and online tools exclusively.

Brougher is also the one who leads the group that manages AdWords reseller relationships, Google’s network of publishers and partners that sell to small businesses. As with Google’smove into direct small business sales (Offers, AdWords Express) — the customer support reps don’t do any outbound sales — the creation of this customer care organization reflects a “cultural shift” and maturation within Google.

With ‘Millions’ Of Users & Growing, Google+ Set To Power All Google Products

With the Google+ user base already in the millions and growing, Google is planning heavy investments in it and will eventually use Plus as the infrastructure behind all of the company’s products.

Speaking to reporters this week in Idaho, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Google is pleased with the early response to Plus and is planning to use its core identity and “circles” features across Google products.

“The current inclination of the company,” Schmidt said, “is to invest heavily … we test stuff and, when it works, we put a lot more emphasis on it. So, Google+ — all the signs are very positive, so now the whole company is ramping up on top of it.”

Schmidt said he didn’t know the exact number of Google+ users, but said it was in the “millions.” (Early this week, Google+ user Paul Allen — who co-founded Ancestry.com and is now Chief Revenue Officer at FamilyLink.com — used surname distribution data from the US Census Bureau to estimate that Plus had about 1.7 million users as of Monday.)

Plus is still in its infancy, so Schmidt was non-committal about a lot of specifics, but he made repeated references to Google+ being used to power and improve other Google products. Consider these three quotes:

As we move our stuff onto what you think of as Google+, there’s a nice set of product improvements in core search, YouTube, maps, and so forth, which should drive adoption.

We’re trying to use the identity infrastructure to make Google products really interesting. Imagine all of those properties adopting the circles metaphor — Buzz adopting it, Gmail adopting it.

The assumption is that as it grows and ramps up, everything will move over to using the + infrastructure.

Schmidt said that he’s pleased with two particular aspects of the Google+ launch: One, that many people have been unhappy about not having an invite and, two, that many users seem to understand how it differs from Facebook.

You can listen to all of Schmidt’s comments on TechCrunch.

Google Panda Update Discussion

With Google Panda Update 2.2 upon us, it’s worth revisiting what exactly Panda is and isn’t. Panda is a new ranking factor. Panda is not an entirely new overall ranking algorithm that’s employed by Google. The difference is important for anyone hit by Panda and hoping to recover from it.

Google’s Ranking Algorithm & Updates

Let’s start with search engine optimization 101. After search engines collect pages from across the web, they need to sort through them in demand to searches that are done. Which are the best? To decide this, they employ a ranking algorithm. It’s like a recipe for cooking up the best results.

Like any recipe, the ranking algorithm contains many ingredients. Search engines look at words that appear on pages, how people are linking to pages, try to calculate the reputation of websites and more. Our Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors explains more about this.

Google is constantly tweaking its ranking algorithm, making little changes that might not be noticed by many people. If the algorithm were a real recipe, this might be like adding in a pinch more salt, a bit more sugar or a teaspoon of some new flavoring. The algorithm is mostly the same, despite the little changes.

From time-to-time, Google does a massive overhaul of its ranking algorithm. These have been known as “updates” over the years. “Florida” was a famous one from 2003; the Vince Update hit in 2009; the Mayday Update happened last year.

Index & Algorithm Updates

Confusingly, the term “updates” also gets used for things that are not actual algorithm updates. Here’s some vintage Matt Cutts on this topic. For example, years ago Google used to do an “index update” every month or so, when it would suddenly dump millions of new pages it had found into its existing collection.

This influx of new content caused ranking changes that could take days to settle down, hence the nickname of the “Google Dance.” But the changes were caused by the algorithm sorting through all the new content, not because the algorithm itself had changed.

Of course, as said, sometimes the core ranking algorithm itself is massively altered, almost like tossing out an old recipe and starting from scratch with a new one. These “algorithm updates” can produce massive ranking changes. But Panda, despite the big shifts it has caused, is not an algorithm update.

Instead, Panda — like PageRank — is a value that feeds into the overall Google algorithm. If it helps consider it as if every site is given a PandaRank score. Those low in Panda come through OK; those high get hammered by the beast.

Calculating Ranking Factors

So where are we now? Google has a ranking algorithm, a recipe that assesses many factors to decide how pages should rank. Google can — and does — change some parts of this ranking algorithm and can see instant (though likely minor) effects by doing so. This is because it already has the values for some factors calculated and stored.

For example, let’s say Google decides to reward pages that have all the words someone has searched for appearing in close proximity to each other. It decides to give them a slightly higher boost than in the past. It can implement this algorithm tweak and see changes happen nearly instantly.

This is because Google’s has already gathered all the values relating to this particular factor. It already has stored the pages and made note of where each word is in proximity to other words. Google can turn the metaphorical proximity ranking factor dial up from say 5 to 6 effortlessly, because those factors have already been calculated as part of an ongoing process.

Automatic Versus Manual Calculations

Other factors require deeper calculations that aren’t done on an ongoing basis, what Google calls “manual” updates. This doesn’t mean that a human being at Google is somehow manually setting the value of these factors. It means that someone decides its time to run a specific computer program to update these factors, rather than it just happening all the time.

For example,  a few years ago Google rolled out a “Google Bomb” fix. But then, new Google Bombs kept happening! What was up with that? Google explained that there was a special Google Bomb filter that would periodically be run, since it wasn’t needed all the time. When the filter ran, it would detect new Google Bombs and defuse those.

In recipe terms, it would be as if you were using a particular brand of chocolate chips in your cookies but then switched to a different brand. You’re still “inputting” chocolate chips, but these new chips make the cookies taste even better (or so you hope).

NOTE: In an earlier edition of this story, I’d talked about PageRank values being manually updated from time-to-time. Google’s actually said they are constantly being updated. Sorry about any confusion there.

The Panda Ranking Factor

Enter Panda. Rather than being a change to the overall ranking algorithm, Panda is more a new ranking factor that has been added into the algorithm (indeed, on our SEO Periodic Table, this would be element Vt, for Violation: Thin Content).

Panda is a filter that Google has designed to spot what it believes are low-quality pages. Have too many low-quality pages, and Panda effectively flags your entire site. Being Pandified, Pandification — whatever clever name you want to call it — doesn’t mean that your entire site is out of Google. But it does mean that pages within your site carry a penalty designed to help ensure only the better ones make it into Google’s top results.

At our SMX Advanced conference earlier this month, the head of Google’s spam fighting team, Matt Cutts, explained that the Panda filter isn’t running all the time. Right now, it’s too much computing power to be running this particular analysis of pages.

Instead, Google runs the filter periodically to calculate the values it needs. Each new run so far has also coincided with changes to the filter, some big, some small, that Google hopes improves catching poor quality content.  So far, the Panda schedule has been like this:

• Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
• Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 weeks later)
• Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about  4 weeks later)
• Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 weeks later)

Recovering From Panda

For anyone who was hit by Panda, it’s important to understand that the changes you’ve made won’t have any immediate impact.

For instance, if you started making improvements to your site the day after Panda 1.0 happened, none of those would have registered for getting you back into Google’s good graces until the next time Panda scores were assessed — which wasn’t until around April 11.

With the latest Panda round now live, Google says it’s possible some sites that were hit by past rounds might see improvements, if they themselves have improved.

The latest round also means that some sites previously not hit might now be impacted. If your site was among these, you’ve probably got a 4-6 week wait until any improvements you make might be assessed in the next round.

If you made changes to your site since the last Panda update, and you didn’t see improvements, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve still done something wrong. Pure speculation here, but part of the Panda filter might be watching to see if a site’s content quality looks to have improved over time. After enough time, the Panda penalty might be lifted.

Takeaways

In conclusion, some key points to remember:

Google makes small algorithm changes all the time, which can cause sites to fall (and rise) in rankings independently of Panda.

Google may update factors that feed into the overall algorithm, such as PageRank scores, on an irregular basis. Those updates can impact rankings independently of Panda.

So far, Google has confirmed when major Panda factor updates have been released. If you saw a traffic drop during one of these times, there’s a good chance you have a Panda-related problem.

Looking at rankings doesn’t paint an accurate picture of how well your site is performing on Google. Look at the overall traffic that Google has sent you. Losing what you believe to be a key ranking might not mean you’ve lost a huge amount of traffic. Indeed, you might discover that in general, you’re as good as ever with Google.

re: http://searchengineland.com/why-google-panda-is-more-a-ranking-factor-than-algorithm-update-82564

Google Social Search

Google announced they have begun their international rollout of Google Social Search, which launched in October 2009.

Social Search is being pushed out to 19 new languages over the upcoming days and weeks. Google promises even more languages in the near future. Google said, “with these changes, we want to help you find the most relevant information from the people who matter to you.”

In January 2010, Google pushed social search live for many, after a beta release in late 2009. Since then, Google has continued to integrate social signals into the product to make it more relevant and useful for users.

Social Search is a major initiative for Google being that Google has very limited, if any, access to Facebook, and we all know that Bing is ranking results based on Facebook’s social graph.

re: http://searchengineland.com/google-launching-social-search-in-19-new-languages-77865?utm_source=sel&utm_medium=home&utm_campaign=flip

Google Gets Social Retool

Google’s Search Results Get More Social; Twitter As The New Facebook “Like”

Feb 17, 2011 at 10:00am ET by Matt McGee

Your friends’ activity on Twitter, Flickr and elsewhere — but for now, not Facebook — will soon be a lot more visible in Google’s search results, including having an impact on how pages rank. Google has announced an expansion of its Google Social Search results that’s beginning to roll out today on Google.com. Here’s a look at what’s new:

Social Search Blended Into “Regular” Results

Prior to today’s announcement, Social Search results — which Google introduced in October 2009 — only appeared at the bottom of a search results page or after clicking the “Social” filter in the left-side column. Now, you might see them mixed anywhere in the search results.

For example, if you’re connected to Google’s Matt Cutts and do a search for “climbing kilimanjaro,” you might see a blog post that he shared through a service like Twitter or Google Buzz quite high on page one.

2011 is close... What is your Search Engine Marketing plan?

Our Decemebr 2010 Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/b6mBr

Bing announces a slew of updates... It's about time.

Microsoft unveiled a dizzying array of nearly across-the-board updates and improvements for Bing online and mobile apps. Some are minor and some are more significant. Most of these upgrades and feature enhancements will be available starting today or later this month.

There are in fact so many things rolling out simultaneously that it’s a bit overwhelming. Accordingly in this post I’m just going to offer up an edited version of the information provided by Microsoft. We’ll explore selected features and products later in subsequent posts.

Facebook-related:

• Like Annotations: Search results will now show which links on the main results page have been “liked” by a person’s Facebook friends.
• Social annotations: Bing is bringing “like” data into core search across all queries. Search results will now show which links on the search engine results page have been “liked” by a person’s Facebook friends. This feature will show what a person’s friends “liked” on the main results page and will be different for each user.

Local enhancements:

• OpenTable will be integrated into the local search vertical, allowing people to book reservations from the restaurant details page in Bing.
• FanSnap will be integrated into the local search vertical, allowing people to purchase tickets to a concert or sporting event through the events details page in Bing.
• Everyscape integration: Interior Views on business profile pages will allow people to see inside local restaurants and businesses with 360-degree panoramic views. These views will be accessible from the local search results. This feature will initially be available in Seattle, San Francisco and Boston.

Bing maps:

• Bing Maps will feature stronger differentiation and contrast between major and minor city streets so streets “pop” out more
• Venue maps provide detailed maps and directories of venues, such as shopping malls, airports, museums and college campuses, within Bing Maps.
• Improved Landmark Listings: Users now get contact information, related businesses, and landmark details immediately from the search for a landmark.
• Transit Routing: Transit directions will be available for the AJAX experience. Users can choose their desired departure time and choose among multiple routes with similar travel time. The initial cities in the release are: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Newark Metro Area, New York Metro Area, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver BC, and Washington DC.
• Map Interface: The new Bing.com/Maps experience allows rich features to be more accessible by all users. In this release, the Map Apps button and Gallery can be viewed in the Bing.com/Maps (AJAX) site – once a Map App is opened, users without Silverlight will be shown how to download Silverlight to access Map Apps.
• Map App Search: Adds a search box to find map apps within the app gallery.
• The left-rail of the AJAX site will now guide users to some of Bing Maps’ key features – directions, traffic, business lookup, and map apps – and helps map apps to be more discoverable within the core experience.

Mobile (iPhone):

• Autosuggest: Bing intelligently narrows and refines restaurant and movie searches by suggesting query strings to help people plan the perfect night out.
• Bing Vision: Bring an object into the [camera] viewfinder, hold it still and Bing will detect text and present a highlighter tool to select words for a search. If the object has a barcode, Bing will instantly return product results. Search for a nearby business listing by pointing your camera at a landmark.
• Check-in: Share your current location with friends and family via Facebook, foursquare or Windows Live Activity Stream.
• iPhone Apps: Surfaces iPhone apps in search results, when relevant.
• Plans: From the Bing homepage or a local search result, people can plan a night out and share the plan with friends via Facebook, who can comment or join the plan.
• Opentable and Grubhub integration: With the integration of Opentable and Grubhub into Bing for Mobile, once you find your restaurant of choice, you can reserve a table on OpenTable or order takeout from Grubhub without leaving the Bing app.
• Real-Time Transit Predictions: Real-time updates for Boston, San Francisco and Seattle allow commuters to see if transit options are on schedule, early or delayed, with predictions for arrival times.
• Reminders: Create a “to-do” list and set reminders to receive alerts when near a specific location.
• Enhanced StreetSide: Helps people orient themselves in unfamiliar places by stitching together and panning across street-level imagery of businesses, addresses or landmarks.

Mobile (Android):

• Search Widget: expands beyond the ability to search contacts, apps, audio files or the Web and includes ability to search third party apps that register to be searchable.
• Share Command: Share content with friends using any loaded app that can accept and share content (images, URLs, etc.).
• Opentable and Grubhub integration: With the integration of Opentable and Grubhub into Bing for Mobile, you can reserve a table on OpenTable or order takeout from Grubhub without leaving the Bing app.

Travel:

• Flight Summary: Displays an instant set of airfares as users enter flight details such as cities and dates. This provides people with an approximate cost for their trip without having to complete a full search, and allows people to see alternative travel options that could help save money or provide a better value.
• Flight Answers: Flight search options have expanded to include Flight Answers, which utilize flight search and top deals. Users can type “I want to fly to Paris next January” and find a form pre-filled with January dates, or try “fly SEA to SFO on Dec 9 returning Dec 12” to find precise flight information. Users can also construct queries around one-way, non-stop and airline-specific requests.
• Destination Pages: Bing’s new destination pages pull together all the key information on a city, saving you time and energy: flights and hotels, images, attractions, events, maps and a weather overview.
• Attraction Answers: Bing attractions now features 60K attractions Worldwide, ~20K attractions US.

Image search:

• Bing’s new image search organizes images in a more intuitive way and brings back additional categories
• Collage Answers: Richer instant answers across entertainment verticals including music, movies, TV and Games.

Entertainment:

• Landing pages for movies and television shows will now include organizational tabs to allow people to explore more detailed information such as trailers, reviews and showtimes.
• Extended TV listings and episode guides will be integrated into search results, along with TV clips and show information.