Google Open Doors to the 'Google House'

Mumbai, India, Aug 20: Today Google flung open the doors to the “Google House” — a showcase of the latest product innovations for India’s ‘mobile first’ world. The event featured demonstrations of Google’s Search, Maps, Photos, Translate and YouTube apps, as well as appearances from celebrity chef Kunal Kapur, fashion photographer Dabboo Ratnani and Anushka Menon and YouTube comedic sensation Karan Talwar. The celebrities discussed how Google’s mobile products make their lives a little easier.

As Sandeep Menon, Google Country Marketing Director explains “Indians are coming online from mobile devices at an incredibly rapid rate — six to seven million new mobile internet users every month. Today’s event is about showcasing how we’re working to make our products relevant and useful for India, and how smartphones have evolved to become the best personal assistant you’ve never had. Whether you need to get directions 10 minutes before your next meeting, a step by step recipe to make an impression, or a way to never be late to the airport again, Google can help keep you connected to the people and information that you care about.”

Additionally in Google’s quest to foster the next generation of talent in the Indian YouTube creator community, YouTube has partnered with one of Asia’s largest and most renowned film schools, Whistling Woods International, to set up a new YouTube Space in Mumbai. A collaboration and production facility for YouTube video creators. Through this collaboration, India's popular up-and-coming YouTube creators, as well as their students, will have free access to Whistling Woods’ studios, high-end audio, visual and editing equipment, over and above their training programs, workshops and community events.

Keeping true to its commitment, Google has also been working on seamless Voice Search experience that lets you search by speaking your query into your phone, instead of typing it. Google voice search has been optimized for English in the Indian accent, as well as in Hindi. To access Voice Search, just tap the microphone icon on the Google search bar, and speak your query, and voila—see your spoken words get transcribed automatically, and searched for in Google

Key Highlights from the mobile-focused demonstrations at the Google House included:
● A hands-on showcase of the new instant translation feature in Google Translate. Recently launched in Hindi, instant translate helps you break through language barriers by instantly translating printed text, like street signs or ingredient lists by opening the app on your phone and pointing your camera at the text.
●A look at the new Google Photos app which automatically backs up photos and videos across all your devices. With people around the world uploading 1.8 billion photos every day, taking 93 million selfies and more photos being taken every two minutesthan the whole of humanity took in the 1800s, it’s just as well that Google Photo offers unlimited, free storage.
●An overview of recent Search innovations like faster and lighter search results for people accessing the web from a mobile device with a slow connection like 2G. Voice Search updates to the Google app which has been optimised for English in the Indian accent and in Hindi to make finding answers to your questions faster, easier and more local. As well as some of the latest Google Now updates, which bring you information when and where you want it, before you even have to ask — like a personal assistant.
● As well as an overview of recent offline features, like the ability to save Maps for times when you might not have a connection. OrYouTube Offline, which gives you a way to watch videos without chewing through all your data — even when you don’t have a connection.

What the celebrities at the Google House are saying….

Photography stars Dabboo Ratnani & Anushka Menon
For celebrity photographer Dabboo Ratnani, Bollywood is where home is and photography a way of life. "While photography is a way of life for me, what’s also important is making sure my clientele has easy and early access to the photos I take of them. I’m always on the move so it is important for me to have access to a good photo editor and for me to be able to search through and find a particular photo shoot quickly enough. Google Photos has both of these features easily available to access in terms of a great editor and the cool new Assistant feature. These have become my favourites today!”

While, Anushka Menon, one of India’s most iconic fashion and beauty photographers, said "Photography is adding a humanistic, versatile & colourful touch to make my work both modern and fresh. I always try to combine aesthetics that combine Indian culture and western fashion codes. My favourite feature is being able to store multiple pictures and not worry about running out of space. I also love that they are chronologically arranged and each of my photo shoot appears as a beautiful Story that I can go back and share with my friends and family.”

Celebrity chef Kunal Kapur
Commenting on his use of Google Search, celebrated chef Kunal Kapur says, “I travel the world meeting new people, experiencing new cultures and of course, searching for new ingredients and culinary experiences. Sometimes when I travel I don’t even know the name of the ingredients I see in the local markets and Google Image search helps me find out what it is exactly. Another great feature is the abundance of recipes online. I still remember days when I looked through my grandma’s book of recipes. Today, all I do is search online and find a treasure trove of so many recipes sent in by users from their families. And I use Google Now to keep everything organized. It has become my constant companion and has made managing a multi time-zone life much easier while Google Photos helps me archive and share my experiences instantly.”

YouTube comedian Karan Talwar
As YouTube funny man Karan Talwar explains “One of the best things that Google has done for its consumers is providing them the ‘YouTube Offline’ option. This helps my viewers access my videos easily and also helps everyone view their favourite videos anytime, anywhere without a data connection. I myself save a lot of videos offline for viewing to avoid buffering and save time.”

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Why Guest Posting Is In Danger?

Guest Posting for many marketers has been rescue of sorts. With all the available link sources slowly depleting, this has been the only stable provider for link juice to websites after the recent Google updates. This like all other link avenues in the past has been exploited to the fullest & big G is fully aware of this. Almost everyone by now has predicted that Google will definitely bring out a change in its algorithm to bring out an even playing ground for everyone. And taking into account Google’s past approaches (punitive actions) to the link source abuse, the change is only a matter of time.

This has led the digital marketing world into a tizzy as to what ideally should be their approach for guest posting? Should one leave completely the guest posting avenue & move on to something else? Or wait for the next Google update which might dent into the recent efforts of content outreach? Should one use do follow/no follow links for content outreach? If do follow is being used, then how many links from the content? Nobody exactly knows the answer to these questions as to what should one do to make their content outreach program full proof from here.

As always, the best thing to do when facing such a situation is to go back to the basics. Google has always been very clear about giving the best search experience to its users. The recent approach that has been suggested by Google is “If you link to something with the intent that it should help your Google rankings – then nofollow the link. If you write something without that intent and the link is really natural, then there is no reason to nofollow the link”

Now the next question is how does one give weightage to our need of passing the value via content outreach & on the other hand what Google is saying? We all know that many website owners & businesses hire content writers to generate outstanding content month after month. This content is specially created so that it can be shared across relevant niche domains so that link value can be achieved. When Google says “ If you write something without that intent and the link is really natural, then there is no reason to nofollow the link” – it means when you share content which is very outstanding, extremely relevant to the audience, a hot topic which is trending & making people buzz about it, only then should one use a do follow link. This seems a very good idea at the outset & makes us all feel that this is the right step moving forward to make web search more relevant & meaningful. However this implementation seems extremely lofty since creating such content in itself is such a huge challenge. Moreover the whole idea seems to directly affect the backbone of SEO – link building as a whole. These changes make one limited to on-page optimization. How does one make his site rank for keywords which his target audience searches for week after week? The only other alternative remaining with us is to use citation sources. In addition, we do have scope of utilizing niche directories as well which too are soon going to come under scanner. In addition, the relevant niche directories are numbered after the updates. Both of the above link sources have their constraints.

Thus guest posting is an extremely invaluable modus operandi to make a site tick for its search terms. Google too is fully aware of this & thus has not taken any punitive action against guest posting despite content being posted in exchange for money without considering relevance & quality of the content along with the other abuse this medium has suffered.
The only solution to this is we as search engine professionals use this invaluable resource thoughtfully. Here are a few steps that we can take-
1. Ensure that only quality content is posted (The term quality is subjective. However we need to be rationale while deciding on the content)
2. Balance of do follow/ no follow links in a content
3. Trying to use all types of anchor text in your backlinks to reach a balanced link profile
4. We still need to target our keywords in content outreach however we need to decide which keywords are our priority & need to be targeted in content outreach while others can be targeted via other mediums. Let us not forget that content outreach is the last ace in our hands.
It is highly unlikely Google will ban guest posting since it knows the immense value that fresh content adds to web search. However it is high time we pull our socks up & use this invaluable resource in moderation since Google will definitely keep an eye on the abuse of this medium. We need to take the above mentioned steps not only to avoid our sites being affected with the next update but also to save this tool called Guest Posting which we are so highly dependent on.

Author Bio:
Aaditya Shah works as a Search Marketing professional at SMG Convonix. He loves every aspect of digital marketing especially content outreach & link building. Closely follows Google updates & algorithm changes & loves to continuously experiment with SEO to decode the mystery around web search. A complete foodie!! -his hobbies include playing Cricket & watching movies.

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