The Wall Street Journal recently announced that Google will be undergoing a big change. The search giant plans to do a large re-fresh of its algorithm to include “semantic search” technology.  The support system will be Google’s Knowledge Graph and the change is expected to take effect in the next couple of months.

The overall goal of the refresh will be to provide users with direct answers to a search query by understanding the actual meaning of the words, which is generated through an understanding of the association between words used. Amit Singhal, a top Google search executive, said the update will allow Google search to more closely replicate “how humans understand the world.”

This is nothing entirely new, as Google has performed similar updates in the past. Google’s primary goal seems to be to maintain their lead ahead of Bing and catch up to Apple’s Siri voice-activated mobile search. Singhal said, “Let me just say that every day, we’re improving our ability to give you the best answers to your questions as quickly as possible, so stay tuned for updates on what will continue to be a long road ahead.”

With big name social platforms like Facebook & Twitter hogging the online spotlight, blogs seem to have wrongfully slipped by the buzz radar. According to a recent Neilsen report, the number of blogs has increased from 35 million to 181 million over the past 5 years with a 22% increase from 2010 to 2011. Neilson attributes the number of growing blogs to the increase in bloggers.

By Kinnick Wheaton, Account Coordinator

Over the past two decades, techonological innovation and consumer expectation have changed dramatically making marketing according to consumer expectation more important than ever.

As technological innovation speeds to satisfy consumer needs, consumer expectations increase to mirror technological innovation. And so the cycle continues.

Over the last decade, evidence of this rapidly evolving pattern is everywhere. “We have entered a period of history where digital technologies are driving massive disruption and incredibly rapid change in consumer behavior and expectation,” explains Jeremy Lockhorn in the ClickZ article, “The Expectation Epidemic.” In particular, Lockhorn identifies the innovation of apps and the touch screen as the catalysts for the rapid speed increase in the Technology Adoption Lifecycle—a purchasing philosophy created in the 1950’s.

Joe M. Bohlen and George M. Beal first introduced the Technology Adoption Lifecycle in 1957 at Iowa State University. The original purpose of this process was to analyze the purchasing pattern of farmers buying hybrid corn. The process is measured by the actions of five groups of technology adopters: the innovators, the early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and the laggards. In the last few years, the rate at which technology is adopted by each these groups has increased significantly.

By Kinnick Wheaton, Account Coordinator

As Google innovates, consumers post reviews and social media booms, marketing strategies must heed to the importance of the local search result.

It has been said that 2011 will be the year of local and mobile search. Already, local search innovations are popping up everywhere. This seems a natural progression now that mobile devices are capable of efficiently browsing the internet and new apps are created daily to facilitate local interactions. The strength of “local” in the SEM industry is indicated by Google’s local-favored search result innovations, the increasing importance of online reviews, and what local businesses are doing—or should to be doing—to keep up a vibrant online local presence. The trend of “going local” must not be ignored when managing a marketing program for any kind of business.

The most evident local innovation is the way Google organizes results for certain queries. Google posts local results before organic results and paid ads for queries it believes to be locally related. For example, when searching for weather or pizza, the initial results are that of local pizza joints or real-time weather forecasts. These results are enhanced by Google toolbar’s My Location feature, which allows users to define and alter their current location by entering a zip code or city/state location.

Similarly, Google Instant, another recent innovation, has also been a larger player in the growth of local search. With Google Instant, results change depending on whether the search is taking place on a mobile device or PC because Google assumes that users using a mobile device are more locally focused.