Today, the team announced the release of the following into the Webmaster Labs area:

• Create your Sidewiki page owner entry
• Fetch as Gooblebot Mobile

The Webmaster Tools Lab is where the team release their improvements and functionality for public testing before releasing them properly into the Webmaster Area.

So what are these 2 new tools?

“Create your Sidewiki page owner entry”

Sidewiki was a web page annotation service that Google launched last year. It allows users to make notes against pages on the web. These notes can also be made public so that other users who are using the Google Searchwiki can see other users thoughts/ideas.

“After Sidewiki launched webmasters kept asking, “How can I put a Sidewiki page owner entry on all pages of my site quickly?” With the feature that we’re introducing today, you can now create these page owner entries directly within Webmaster Tools for any site you own.”

As a website owner – it’s important for you to claim your site in Sidewiki. That way – you can at least have your say before every one else comments on your webpages.

I’m still a believer that eventually (if not already), Google will use these social web elements to help rank listings in the future. So claiming and optimizing via sidewiki could be a further element in your future SEO plan.

“Fetch as Gooblebot Mobile”.

As webmaster or site owner – it’s important to see how your website is seen from Googlebot’s point of view. At the end of the day – that determines how your site is going to be indexed.

Now for the mobile savvy webmasters – you can request to see how your mobile site is seen by the Googlebot.

“After we launched Fetch as Googlebot, many users with mobile-specific sites asked if we could provide the ability to fetch their pages as Googlebot-Mobile. We thought it was a great idea, and added it as an option to our Fetch as Googlebot feature. We have two mobile options: cHTML (primarily used for Japanese sites), and XHTML/WML.”

While this wont seem important to many of you now – just think about how many people you know that have smart phones and surf the web on them. When you consider the number of people surfing the web on mobiles – it suddenly becomes far more important.

So pop over to your webmaster account and check out the new features. Let us know what you think and whether you will find them useful.

Now before any of you get concerned with Privacy – this isn’t your personal stats and online data – it’s more generic public information. Here’s an excerpt from the release post last year.

“We just launched a new search feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data. So for example, when comparing Santa Clara county data to the national unemployment rate, it becomes clear not only that Santa Clara’s peak during 2002-2003 was really dramatic, but also that the recent increase is a bit more drastic than the national rate:”

This video gives a quick summary on how it works:

Google has now released the Public Data Explorer into Google Labs.

Google Public Data Explorer takes the enormous amount of data available and provides useful visualization capabilities – helping users make sense of the stats.

“This information is only useful if it’s easy to access, understand and communicate. That’s why today we’re also releasing the Google Public Data Explorer in Labs, a new experimental product designed to help people comprehend data and statistics through rich visualizations.”

To give you some idea of what information people are researching in the Public Data search, Google has released its top search topics are. Here’s the Top 10:

1. School comparisons
2. Unemployment
3. Population
4. Sales tax
5. Salaries
6. Exchange rates
7. Crime statistics
8. Health statistics (health conditions)
9. Disaster statistics
10. Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

For the numbers and stats buffs, they’ll love the data that’s available in the database. I recommend heading over and having a dig around the data.

This week, Google unveiled its newest Local enhancement – the “Nearby” filter.

Google’s Search Options became a permanent feature of the SERPs back in late 2009. The search options give users more control over their search results, allowing them to filter based on search verticals, date, previous search behaviour, and some experimental search views.

Nearby search allows users to refine results to those clearly defined as being within a set proximity of the user. From the launch post:

Starting today, we’ve added the ability to refine your searches with the “Nearby” tool in the Search Options panel. One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don’t have to worry about adding “Minneapolis” to your query and missing webpages that only say “St. Paul” or “Twin Cities.”

Below you can see how the new feature appears in the Search Options panel.

While Google haven’t yet officially announced exactly how it determines the results under these searches, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to start optimizing for Local organic results.

To get started, these 3 steps are a good place to start:

1. Ensure your address details are included across your website (footer or header). When including your address, make sure to cover off the suburb, major city, state etc. This will help to ensure you’re included no matter what filter the user includes.
2. Google Local Business Listing is a must for your business. Google will naturally be using its local business database to help assign locator data to it’s natural index.
3. Gather links from Local centric sources. Links from local groups, councils etc will help to identify your website as a key information source from a local area.

At this stage, the “nearby” filter is only available to users on the Google.com site, but it’s sure to roll out further over the coming months.

After securing a deal with Twitter in December last year (and MySpace also) which saw Google take the lead in the real time search space, this latest initiative will help cement its position forefront.

At this stage, reports suggest that Google will only be indexing status updates from Facebook pages and not users status updates. There are probably a few reasons for this – the noise, privacy etc etc.

What this does mean is that businesses can start looking at Facebook as an important search engine marketing strategy. Where in the past, many businesses resigned themselves to the fact that Facebook did reach the right audience, Google’s indexing of updates extends the reach.

There are already over 3 million active Facebook pages which have some where in excess of 5.3 billion fans. Most Facebook page are used by businesses to promote products and services, so setting up a Facebook page for your business is now more important than ever.

I’m interested to know how this fits into Google’s plans with its own real time life streaming tool – Google Buzz which it recently launched. Until Buzz reaches a critical mass – Google will continue to focus on where the content is.

With the indexing of Facebook content already underway, it’ll be interesting to hear what Microsoft plans to do given the existing relationship between the two companies.

Let us know your thoughts on the new deal and the use of Facebook Pages via our comments below:

• How do you use Facebook pages to promote your business?
• Do you think the inclusion of Facebook pages will enhance or hinder real time search?

Over the last few months, Google has been building a range of insights in the Opportunities Tab to help AdWords users optimize their Google advertising campaigns.

In the Opportunities Tab, AdWords users can find customized keyword and budget ideas to help refine the performance of campaigns.

Budget Ideas:
Your Opportunities tab shows budget ideas when a campaign is repeatedly meeting its daily budget. Such campaigns are limited by budget and therefore are missing out on potential traffic and clicks.

Each budget idea shows a recommended daily budget for that campaign as well as the predicted impact of using that budget. These are the same budget recommendations as you sometimes see in your campaign settings.

Keyword Ideas:
The keyword ideas on your Opportunities tab can help extend your advertising reach by targeting additional customers. You might gain additional impressions and clicks when you add relevant keywords to an ad group.

NEW: Keyword Bid Ideas

Well, now Google has added Bid Ideas into the Opportunities Tab. According to the release post:

“Bid ideas, based on bid simulator data, will help you raise or lower your bids on specific keywords to improve your AdWords ROI. Whether you wish to decrease overall costs or increase traffic to your website, customized bid ideas can help you determine exactly which bids to adjust to make the most of your advertising budget.

You’ll see bid ideas in your account if we determine there’s an opportunity for you to:

• receive significant additional clicks without a significant increase in cost
• save money without sacrificing a lot of clicks

When you view the Bid Ideas, you’ll see “their estimated cost, impression, and click impact. When you click on a bid idea, you’ll see a graph showing clicks versus cost for a range of bid amounts. The graph will include your keyword’s current bid (marked in gray) and the proposed bid (marked in yellow).”

The sceptics out there are always weary when the likes of Google offer advertising optimization advice. The primary concern is that their interests are in you spending more money.

This might be true – but they’re more interested in you being successful, so you keep spending money – so the Opportunities Tab is worth checking out.

My advice is that you should always consider Google’s recommendations in light of your own Google Adwords strategy.

Remember, Google can only see what the data tells it. So it’s not going to be aware of tests, special offers, or other factors that might be influencing your campaign decisions.

• Let us know what you think about Google’s newest Opportunity Insight…

Tracking social media is no easy feat. When you consider just how much content is created every hour, the task of following the various sources is extremely time consuming. To help you streamline the process, I’ve provided my top 10 social media tracking tools below.

And the best part is that they’re all FREE!

And here’s the list:

Google Alerts
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
http://www.google.com/alerts

Social Mention
Real-time social media search and analysis. Social media alerts, like Google Alerts but for social media. Receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, or on a developing news story, a competitor, or the latest on a celebrity.
http://www.socialmention.com/

Addict-o-matic
Addictomatic searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images. It’s the perfect tool to keep up with the hottest topics, perform ego searches and feed your addiction for what’s up, and what’s now.
http://addictomatic.com/

Yacktrack
a social media monitor and conversation tracker. As a content producer, you can search for comments on your content from various sources or other blogs that talk about your content. Granted, this may sound like it is targeted at the content producer, but it can also help the people commenting on the content themselves.
http://yacktrack.com/search

Omgili
Omgili is your way to find “subjective information”. As opposed to traditional search engines, which search for sites and pages, Omgili finds consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions.
http://omgili.com/

Boardreader
A simple search engine that scans various forums, messageboards and now various other forms of social media. Filter searches by preferred sources and keep a breast of your forum mentions.
http://boardreader.com/

Samepoint
Samepoint is a conversation search engine that lets you see what people are talking about.
Discover, learn and share new web sites and ideas.
http://www.samepoint.com/

HowSocialable?
HowSociable provides a simple way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web. Measure your brand against 32 key social metrics.
http://www.howsociable.com/

Surchur
surchur.com is the ultimate dashboard (the developers opinion) to right now. Built by a team that is passionate about what the real time web can offer, we’re constantly improving and updating our site.
http://surchur.com/

Blogpulse
BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs.
http://www.blogpulse.com/

There are plenty of other tools out there to help you keep on top of social media’s content, but these ones work well as aggregators and will definitely help you streamline the tracking of your social media campaigns.

If you use another tool that you think’s worth sharing, post it via our comments below.

According to the grapevine, Google is on the verge (potentially even today) of releasing a new social app or toolwhich is believed to involved social networking and Gmail.

As there has been no official talk or leaks from the Google office, we’re left to industry expert speculation to predict what the new offering will deliver.

The general consensus is that the new tool will be battling in the highly competitive microblogging arena. Think Twitter and Facebook Status Updates.

Here’s what the industry’s heavyweights have to say on the impending release:

• Wall Street Journal:

Google Inc. is taking a swipe at Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. with a new feature that makes it easier for users of Gmail to view media and status updates shared online by their friends.

• Techcrunch:

Google is planning to unveil a broad new social product on Tuesday that will integrate with at least two existing Google products. Some details emerged earlier today on the Wall Street Journal (“a new feature that makes it easier and faster for users of Gmail to view media and status updates”), but our understanding is that the product goes well beyond a Gmail integration.

• Cnet:

Gmail users can already set their status within the service, but Google plans to expand that into a stream of status updates found in services like Facebook and Twitter,

• Mashable:

…the new features could be thought of more like a TweetDeck or Seesmic , looking to provide an aggregate view of your friends’ social media activities along with the ability to push status updates to the services you use from inside of Gmail. If not, it could be thought of as a major competitor to Twitter andFacebook as Gmail looks to covert its millions of e-mail users into adherents to a whole new breed of social media service.

So I guess we’ll find out in a few hours whether the speculation and rumors deliver or whether Google have actually got something different in store.

I really like the concept of aggregating all your streams into one tool. Given my already heavy dependency on Gmail – it could be quite useful to bring all social streams into Gmail too.

The important question is how its executed. The last thing any Gmail user wants is more noise and distraction in their inboxes.

What do you think?

• Are you a Gmail user?
• Would you like to see social streams integrated into Gmail?
• Do you think Google have other plans? If so – what?

UPDATE: 9th Feb 2010

Google Buzz was launched this morning. It seems the industry experts were on the money, and Google Buzz will act as a new lifestream application built directly into Gmail. It allows users to share updates, photos, videos, and more.

And rather than create a new microblogging service in isolation - it also integrates with many of the existing services available such as Twitter. To get the full picture, watch this video.

Google are still in the process of rolling out Google Buzz to all users, so if you cant see it yet - keep checking over the coming weeks as its sure to appear.

Microsoft secured the Facebook search deal back in July 2008. Under the terms of the agreement, Facebook integrated Live Search (which was Bing’s brand back then) web and sponsored listings into the site, providing users with a way of searching the web without leaving.

Under the newly expanded relationship – 3 key areas have changed.

• Expanding Search to Include Richer Results

Facebook will now allow Bing to include richer more comprehensive search listings. It’ll move beyond just link based results to provide richer answers and improve the speed of the searching experience.

• Expansion beyond the US

Up til now, Bing has only secured search on the US version of facebook. This will now move globally, opening Bings results up to a much wider audience.

• Facebook Takes Over Display Advertising

Where Bing has taken responsibility for selling Facebook display advertising to date, under the new conditions, Facebook will take over ad sales and leave sponsored search to Bing/Microsoft.

Jon Tinter, the General Manager of Bing had this to say via the release post:

This is an exciting time for us as we continue to work with Facebook on great new experiences for customers. As you know, Bing has been very focused on helping customers make important decisions. We believe that counsel from family and friends can be a big part of that process. Going deeper in web search experiences with Facebook, in addition to the collaboration we announced last October about bringing public data from Facebook’s API into the search experience, will enable us to do great things together for our customers.

The expansion deal is great for Bing in terms of growing the audience for its web and sponsored search results.

I’m not entirely sure that web search from Facebook is enough to peg back Google’s dominance, but it definitely offers Bing advertisers some unique exposure opportunities.

According to Nicholas Carlson, who reported on plans via the Silicon Alley Insider site, Microsoft will struggle to outbid Google on AOL’s search business.

Sources close to Google’s Mountain View HQ are suggesting Google will take a very aggressive strategy into negotiations, making it almost impossible for competitors to get a look in.

The current deal between Google and AOL is due to end shortly and Tim Armstrong, AOL’s CEO has openly said he’s accepting offers from all parties.

The deal has been obviously been lucrative for both parties, but Mr Armstrong is looking to change some of the conditions during the renegotiations. One of the key changes is the ability for search ads to link to AOL content rather than always pointing to search partner’s advertiser content.

In terms of a search deal, that could throw a spanner in the works. Google will be wary of any restrictions which significantly impact the revenue potential of the deal.

AOL’s viewpoint was summed up well by a statement by Tim earlier this year:

“We’re the largest music content provider online. It may be more strategic for us to put less ads on a search page for outside partners and put more distribution to our music properties on that search page. We can monetize the music traffic and a different part of AOL services with display ads.

[The deal] doesn’t just have to be good for the search part of the business. There are other things in the search deal that we may or may not trade off for search money.”

Given the volume of searches the AOL produces, Google might be prepared to compromise a little to secure the deal. It’s a case of losing a battle to win the war. We’ll have to wait and see if Microsoft has anything up its sleeve.

Back in the old days, monitoring the 100’s of SEO variables of your competitors was just as time consuming as running your own SEO campaigns…

Now, thanks to technology and some very clever people, we have a range of tools that do the hard work for us.

To save you the effort of finding the right tools to spy on your competitors – I’ve listed my Top 10 competitor tools below (in no particular order). If you’re serious about SEO – you need to add these to your SEO arsenal.

Some are free, some offer free trials, some will charge nominal monthly fees – all are worth exploring.

• 1. Website Grader

Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. Visit site

• 2. Compete

Compete PRO Search Analytics bring search marketing into plain view with paid and natural search trends, historical search referral data, and customized filtering capabilities that let you focus on top performing keywords and traffic for thousands of websites. Visit site

• 3. Spyfu

Spyfu is a tool that lets you find out what keywords your competitors are targeting in the search engines. Not just keywords, mind you, but AdWords, too. All you have to do is type your competitor’s site in SpyFu’s search bar, and voila! Visit site

• 4. Yahoo! Site Explorer

Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page. Visit site

• 5. Social Mention

Receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, or on a competitors’ brand or pservices. Visit site

• 6. The Search Monitor

Track market share, page rank, ad copy, landing pages, budgets, day parts, and uncover new competitors on Paid & Organic Search. Visit site

• 7. SEMRush

SEMRush.com was designed to satisfy your needs in advanced SEM and keywords research. We analyze 40 million keywords for 20 million domains. Visit site

• 8. QuarkBase

Find out how good a site is. Get comprehensive website details. Discover competitors. See people, traffic data, similar sites, social comments, description, social popularity and much more about websites. View site

• 9. Linkscape

Linkscape provides link data never available before on over 64+ billion URLs across 259+ million domains. Regular crawls of the web means that Linkscape will keep up with your constant marketing efforts. Take the guesswork out of Internet marketing. Visit site

• 10. Xinu

Find out how well your site or your competitors are doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking services and other site statistics. Visit site

There are plenty more SEO and PPC competitor tracking tools out there, but these are my personal favourites. If you use a tool that you want to share with your fellow readers – drop us a note in the comments below.