Google Becomes A Division Of Alphabet Inc. And Sundar Pichai Is The New CEO At Google

There was a new surprise announcement from the Google headquarters.

Larry Page announced yesterday that,

“We are creating a new company, called Alphabet (http://abc.xyz). I am really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO with help from my capable partner, Sergey, as President.”
He also added we are excited about…

• Getting more ambitious things done.
• Taking the long-term view.
• Empowering great entrepreneurs and companies to flourish.
• Investing at the scale of the opportunities and resources we see.
• Improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing.
• Making Google even better through greater focus.
• And hopefully...as a result of all this, improving the lives of as many people as we can.

Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Our two classes of shares will continue to trade on Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG. Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort. We are also stoked about growing our investment arms, Ventures and Capital, as part of this new structure.

What is Alphabet?
(As Larry explained...)
Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.
Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We'll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation. In addition, with this new structure we plan to implement segment reporting for our Q4 results, where Google financials will be provided separately than those for the rest of Alphabet businesses as a whole.
This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google

New Management Heads at Alphabet and Google:
As regards, management Google co-founders Page and Brin will become CEO and President of the new company, respectively and Sundar Pichai, will become the new Google CEO.

Sundar Pichai - Google CEO

In favor of Sundar Pichai Larry said,

"He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our internet businesses. Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company. http://www.webpro.in/google-becomes-a-division-of-alphabet-inc-and-sundar-pichai-is-the-new-ceo-at-google/ http://www.webpro.in/google-becomes-a-division-of-alphabet-inc-and-sundar-pichai-is-the-new-ceo-at-google/ http://www.webpro.in/google-becomes-a-division-of-alphabet-inc-and-sundar-pichai-is-the-new-ceo-at-google/ http://www.webpro.in/google-becomes-a-division-of-alphabet-inc-and-sundar-pichai-is-the-new-ceo-at-google/ http://www.webpro.in/google-becomes-a-division-of-alphabet-inc-and-sundar-pichai-is-the-new-ceo-at-google/And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google. I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations."
Read More:
http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2015/08/google-alphabet.html?m=1

http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2015/08/google-alphabet.html

https://investor.google.com/releases/2015/0810.html

Google / News - 08/11/2015

Google Also Needs SEO Because It Is The World Wide Web Consortium Which Is A Standard

Recently everyone had their eyes wide open when they read  that Google wants to hire a SEO Manager.

I think it is a very logical thing as Google  also needs to be as per the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) norms. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe, W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential.

Search engines are not the WWW. They are a subset of the WWW superset. http://www.webpro.in/google-also-needs-seo-because-it-is-the-world-wide-web-consortium-w3c-org-which-is-a-standard-and-not-google/ http://www.webpro.in/google-also-needs-seo-because-it-is-the-world-wide-web-consortium-w3c-org-which-is-a-standard-and-not-google/ http://www.webpro.in/google-also-needs-seo-because-it-is-the-world-wide-web-consortium-w3c-org-which-is-a-standard-and-not-google/ http://www.webpro.in/google-also-needs-seo-because-it-is-the-world-wide-web-consortium-w3c-org-which-is-a-standard-and-not-google/ http://www.webpro.in/google-also-needs-seo-because-it-is-the-world-wide-web-consortium-w3c-org-which-is-a-standard-and-not-google/Search engine algorithms try to get quality signals from the web and constantly endeavour to improve the search results so that they can cater quality search results to the user.

Google And w3c.org

Search engines either integrate web standards like XML sitemaps, Schemas, Meta tags,etc. or they create their own standards like the Google created the Authorship Markup.

W3C laid the foundations of today’s Web with standards such as HTML (in 1997) and XML (in 1998).

For example Microformats is not a new concept www.microformats.org domain was registered on 26th January 2005 and since then the site is adding content on how microdata can be added to the websites.

But, it is in 2012 when Google launched the Knowledge Graph that the SEOs started focusing their attention on microdata and made it a well known norm.

From the time the term SEO has been coined, SEOs have been executing repair functions on the websites to make them search engine friendly but its high time we move on from thinking about search engines and start thinking about the quality standards which are friendly to the web eco system and build and structure our online presence (earned and owned) as per the web standards before they get accepted by the search engines.

By giving importance only to the Google algorithms we are paving the way for Google algorithms to become the standard and helping it to monopolize the web.

Hence, Google also needs to futureproof its web presence and websites as per the w3c standards and be prepared to face any kind of competition in future.

Google / SEO - 07/21/2015

Looking For A New Job? Google Is Looking For Program Manager, Search Engine Optimization

Looking for a new job?

Google wants to hire a SEO Manager to improve its organic search presence.

Google published the vacancy on the Google careers Portal :

https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=120105001 .

It says:

As a Program Manager for Technical SEO, you will work with cross-functional teams across Marketing, Sales, Product Development, Engineering and more to help drive organic traffic and business growth. You will take part in website development and optimization, help shape blog and social strategy, improve website code hygiene and define web architecture for international websites.

Google-Headquarters

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is driving the next wave of cloud computing. From lightning fast IaaS to innovate container technology to massive data analysis, GCP is pushing the envelope.http://www.webpro.in/looking-for-a-new-job-google-is-looking-for-program-manager-search-engine-optimization/ As the Cloud SEO program manager, you will be a member of both the Google Cloud Platform Marketing team and the Cloud Web Development team responsible for optimizing the customer journey through search. You will work on projects that require broad cross-functional coordination coupled with a deep knowledge of the cloud computing space.

Responsibilities

  • Architect, design, develop and maintain innovative, engaging and informative sites for a worldwide audience.
  • Maintain and develop the web code to ensure quality, content and readability by search engines.
  • Keep pace with SEO, search engine and internet marketing industry trends and developments and report changes as needed.
  • Advise, collaborate with, and synthesize feedback from Marketing, Product and Engineering partners to push for technical SEO best practices.

Minimum qualifications

  • BA/BS degree in Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent practical experience.
  • 4 years of experience developing websites and applications with SQL, HTML5, and XML.
  • 2 years of SEO experience.
  • Experience with Google App Engine, Google Custom Search, Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics and experience creating and maintaining project schedules using project management systems.

Preferred qualifications

  • Experience working with back-end SEO elements such as .htaccess, robots.txt, metadata and site speed optimization to optimize website performance.
  • Experience in quantifying marketing impact and SEO performance and strong understanding of technical SEO (sitemaps, crawl budget, canonicalization, etc.).
  • Knowledge of one or more of the following: Java, C/C++, or Python.
  • Excellent problem solving and analytical skills with the ability to dig extensively into metrics and analytics.

Think before you say... SEO IS DEAD. Even the Search Giant is serious about its organic search presence

Google / SEO - 07/16/2015

How Social Media Impacts Search Behavior and How Search Behavior Impacts Search Results Eventually

Search queries express the search intent of the user on the search engines. Every search query is influenced by many aspects. It can be a question about:

• A new product or brand,
• It may be about a product they already know and use,
• Or it may be a product that they have seen on social media platforms and are curious to know more about,
• Or a brand which is promoting via other channels and has caught the searcher’s fancy.

Out of curiosity the user may search for:
• Product name
• Product name + Brand name
• Product Category
• Product Category + Brand name

How Social Media Presence Has An Impact On Search Behavior:

In 2009 a research explored the correlation between social media exposure and search behavior over a three month period across different verticals, including automotive, consumer packaged goods and telecommunications.In addition to looking at total internet users, consumers were divided into three segments:

• Consumers exposed only to a brand’s paid search
• Consumers exposed to social media relevant to a brand’s category . A blog, message board/forum, user review, social networking site (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn), Twitter/micro-blogging, or video-sharing site (e.g., YouTube, Google Video), as well as a brand’s social marketing program’s “target” sites, or sites which have the most natural potential to hold content about a brand
• Consumers exposed to influenced social media specific to a brand. Identified sites containing distributed social marketing content of a brand’s social media program

Search behavior was broken into segments based on where queries fell among stages of the purchase funnel. This included upper-funnel terms expressing awareness and consideration (industry relevant terms, general product attributes) to lower-funnel terms expressing action and loyalty (campaign brand terms, brand product terms).

The study showed searchers who engage with social media, especially those exposed to a brand’s influenced social media, are far more likely to search for lower-funnel terms compared to consumers who do not engage with social media.

Further, consumers exposed to a brand’s influenced social media and paid search programs are 2.8x more likely to search for that brand’s products compared to users who only saw paid search.

The study also showed a 50 percent CTR increase in paid search when consumers were exposed to influenced social media and paid search. This revealed consumers exposed to social media are more likely to click on a brand’s paid search ad compared to those exposed to the brand’s paid search alone. Among searchers using a brand’s product name in the query, the CTR increased from 4.5 percent to 11.8 percent when users were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search around a brand.

In organic search, consumers searching on brand product terms who have been exposed to a brand’s social marketing campaign are 2.4x more likely to click on organic links leading to the advertiser’s site than the average user seeing a brand’s paid search ad alone.

“Social media-exposed consumers are far more likely to search for brand and product-related terms, and click on a brand’s paid search ad,” according to Graham Mudd, vice president of comScore, Inc. “This finding provides strong evidence that investing in social media marketing can both increase initial brand consideration and drive higher conversion rates once the consumer has decided to purchase.”

These research results were published in 2009 when social media was just at the initial stage and everyone was just trying to learn how to use each social media platform. In 2015 we can now understand how this is having an impact on search results.

How Brand + Product/Category Search Queries Have An Impact On Search Results:

We have been talking about how search has integrated social media signals to their search algorithms. Now it is time to see its impact on search results.
Social Media is not only Facebook and Twitter but each and every foot print created on the web which has a potential of being shared further.

This is where the content comes in. Social Media presence can be fueled only by valuable content. This content can be in any format. It can be in the form of text, images, audio, video, infographic, etc. As consumers spend more time online and fragment their attention away from traditional media channels across various devices, the task is more challenging than ever before for marketers.

Media delivery has an established place in the media mix. But, search remains the dominant direct response channel. People may come to know about a brand on any social media platform but he will surely go to the search engine to search for the brand and the product and check the search results. The first 10 – 15 search results of the brand are a deciding factor. Social Media presence positively affects consumer purchase consideration, specifically through the search channel

Brand And Product Search Queries And SEO

The social media presence influences the searcher to search for the brand and the product on the search engines. As the social media presence increases (brand + product) searches also increase in number. Over a period of time, the brand gets correlated to the product. Once this correlation becomes stronger the brand’s search presence improves for those product searches.

For example if a brand deals in 5 products and wants its brand to get correlated to all the 5 products then a proper balance is needed on the social media platforms in terms of what is shared on social media. All the 5 products need an equal web presence individually to get correlated to the brand jointly.

Hence, the social media presence of any (brand + product) and (no. of search queries for that brand and product) on the search engines boost the correlation between both the terms i.e (Brand + Product/Category).

Hence to increase the no. of (brand + product) search queries one needs to have a quality web presence via social media, an updated blog, email marketing, participating in online discussions and every other media which can be shared further by the reader easily.

This clearly explains why every brand today needs a social media presence and how search presence and social media presence are integrated. Social media presence triggers the brand and product searches, the more the social media presence (as in Quality not in quantity), the more no. of brand and product search queries. These search queries coming from more no. of distinct users from different parts of the globe act as social signals for search algorithms and as the correlation increases the rankings for brand and product terms jointly and individually improve over a period of time.

The posts published on social media do not only create awareness among the users but each post gets indexed by the search engines as unique URLs. These URLs become the quality, informative and topical inbound links for the domains and establish the correlation further.

The cost of attaining a new customer is always more than that of retaining an old one. Hence it is not only important to focus on increasing online awareness of the brand and product but also focusing on how to respond to the online inquiries immediately and efficiently is equally important. The real ROI is achieved when a new aware customer becomes a loyal customer in the long run.

Hence, quality social media presence service to me is the best off-page optimization that a genuine SEO company can offer. This not only improves the search presence but also has the potential to retain the search presence and make it stable for a long time. SEO is a necessity, Content Marketing is the strategy and Social Media is the channel.

SEO / Social Media - 07/10/2015

Questions Website Owners Should Ask Their SEO To Determine The Success Of The SEO Campaign

It is 2015 and SEO is very much alive and in fact according to my opinion is gaining its true existence and importance like never before.

But, even today when website owners want to evaluate the success of an SEO campaign, they first check the rankings and many times only the rankings.

This has always been a myopic view of the SEO results and now with the current scenario its all the more short sighted and does not give the true picture. Focusing on the larger picture especially in the first 2 years of the SEO campaign is more important.

When I say larger picture, I mean the other parameters which need to be monitored in the initial stages of the SEO campaign.

First let us list the stages in the SEO campaign.
• SEO Audit (on-page and off-page)
• Corrective actions taken on the audit results
• Working on the Local Search presence
• Monitoring the results of the actions taken via WMT and GA

Once the action has been taken on all the factors or while the SEO efforts are in progress the focus should be on how the content is getting correlated to the search queries targeted. Google has got certain parameters in GA and GWMT which give a correct idea.
Recently Google has introduced a detailed Search Analytics Report in GWMT which gives an in-depth idea about these parameters.

Starting with a SEO campaign is like sowing a seed. One needs to nurture it with corrective on-page factors and enrich it with regular informative content to make the search presence grow.

When you sow a seed you do not expect it to be a full-fledged tree in a short duration but you nurture it till it is growing and also protect it once it is fully grown.

Data from Search Analytics OF GWMT and Search Engine Optimization metrics of GA should be tracked to get an idea about the success of the SEO effort put in.
Rankings and a good search presence with a good outreach is the long term goal for SEO. But during the initial stages of the SEO campaign one has to see how closer we are to the goal each day rather than checking if we have reached the goal.

Hence the Search Analytics data , other data from the WMTs and the Search Engine Optimization data helps us measure and monitor how efficiently we are marching ahead towards our goal.

There are some differences between Search Analytics and Search Queries. Data in the Search Analytics report is much more accurate than data in the older Search Queries report, and it is calculated differently.

Search Analytics In Google webmaster Tools

The Search Analytics Report shows :

• How often your site appears in Google search results.
• See how your search traffic changes over time, where it’s coming from, and what search queries are most likely to show your site.
• Learn which queries are made on smartphones, and use this to improve your mobile targeting.
• See which pages have the highest (and lowest) click-through rate from Google search results.

The following metrics are available in the Search Analytics Report :

• Clicks - Count of clicks from a Google search results page that landed the user on your property.
• Impressions - How many links to your site a user saw on Google search results, even if the link was not scrolled into view. However, if a user views only page 1 and the link is on page 2, the impression is not counted.
• CTR - Click-through rate: the click count divided by the impression count.
• Position - The average position of the topmost result from your site. So, for example, if your site has three results at positions 2, 4, and 6, the position is reported as 2. If a second query returned results at positions 3, 5, and 9, your average position would be (2 + 3)/2 = 2.5.

Grouping your data

This data are grouped in the table by selecting a grouping category at the top of the report; for example, choose "Queries" to group data by search query terms, or "Pages" to group by the canonical page returned by search results.

Group by query

Group results by query strings that users searched for on Google. Only searches that returned your site will be included. Very rare queries are not shown in these results to protect the privacy of the user making the query.
Common uses:
• Review the Query list for expected keywords. If keywords that you expect to see don't appear, your site might not have enough useful content relevant to those keywords. If unexpected words (like "Viagra" or "casino") appear, it's likely that your site has been hacked.
• Find queries with high impressions and low CTR. These queries can help identify where you can improve your content to satisfy your user’s interests.

Group by page

Group results by individual page on your property that were returned by search results. Grouping by page can change the metric calculation for CTR, impressions, and clicks.

Group by country

Group results by the country where the search came from; for example, Canada or Mexico.

Group by device

Group results by the device making the search; for example, desktop, tablet, or mobile. If you have separate mobile and desktop sites, for example m.example.com and www.example.com, the metrics for each site will be reported separately in Search Analytics. If you don't have a separate mobile version of your website—for example, you dynamically detect the user agent and adjust the site layout accordingly in a single site—you must group by device to compare the clicks and impressions you get from mobile devices compared to clicks and impressions from desktop users.

Group by date

Shows a graph of your selected metrics over the selected time span. Default time span is four weeks. The data table is not shown when grouping by date.

The Search Engine Optimization reports in Google Analytics use four metrics specific to Google Web Search data:

  • Impressions -the number of times any URL from your site appeared in search results viewed by a user, not including paid AdWords search impressions
  • Clicks—the number of clicks on your website URLs from a Google Search results page, not including clicks on paid AdWords search results
  • Average Position—the average ranking of your website URLs for the query or queries. For example, if your site's URL appeared at position 3 for one query and position 7 for another query, the average position would be 5 ((3+7)/2).
  • CTR—clickthrough rate, calculated as Clicks / Impressions * 100
    The SEO Geographical Summary Report
  • The Geographical Summary report provides a general view of Impressions, Clicks, and CTR by country.

At a glance, you can see which countries are generating the most search activity for your site on Google search. You can also selectGoogle Property as a primary dimension to see a breakdown of search activity on Google search by the following:
• Web search
• Mobile search
• Video search
• Image search

The SEO Queries Report

The Queries report shows the Google search queries that generated the most impressions for your website URLs. You can sort by other columns—such as clicks—to order queries in descending/ascending rank by those metrics.

By using this report, you can identify search queries for which your site has a good average position, but poor click through rates. These are queries for which your pages get attention, so improved content could lead to more traffic.

The SEO Landing Pages Report

The Landing Pages report shows the URLs to your website that have generated the most impressions in Google Web search results. With this report, you can identify landing pages on your site that have good click through rates (CTR), but have poor average positions in search results. These could be pages that people want to see, but have trouble finding.
In addition, a single URL is typically associated with many unique queries. For this reason, the average position ranking for a given page can be influenced by more generic queries, and if you are comparing the top landing pages to the top queries with respect to Average Position, you should keep this in mind.

For example, for a website dedicated to classic automobiles, a query such as classic automobiles might return the URL for the home page only, whereas a query such as classic automobiles Ford might return the URL for the home page as well as other pages in the site.In this case, the generic query improves the position ranking for the home page over the ranking of pages that are more specific in nature.

Before the website starts appearing on page 1 search results for targeted search queries, it has to get crawled, indexed, correlated to relevant content and win the trust factor of the search engine.

Hence, as a website owner instead of only checking rankings ask the following questions to the SEO :

• Are the no. of impressions for the site in the search results increasing?
• Are these impressions from relevant search queries?
• Is the geographic reach increasing?
• Are the landing pages increasing in no.?
• Are the impressions of these landing pages in the search results relevant to the search queries targeted for that page?
• The CTR (click thru rate) gives you an idea about the relevance of the title tag and the description tag. Can the CTR rate increase if the meta tags are rewritten with more compelling content ?
• If our site is responsive then are we getting clicks from mobile devices?
• Is the ‘Mobile Friendly’ label visible for the site for mobile search results?
• Also check the indexing, crawling rate and the crawl errors in the WMT.
• Check if there are any errors or warnings for the XML sitemaps submitted?

Once the answers to these queries are sort and corrective actions taken for improvement then check the rankings and the inquiries from the web via the contact age or the call to action on the various pages to determine the success of the SEO campaign and organic search presence.

Google / SEO - 05/09/2015

Please Note: The Mobile-Friendly Update Launched By Google Is Called Mobilegeddon By Search Engine Land and Not By Google

Including mobile friendliness as one of the ranking factors has surely made the SEOs and website owners busy . They are all working on making their sites responsive and gain the Mobile-Friendly badge for search results.

All this is ok but is it justified that all the posts on this topic are referring this update as Mobilegeddon. This is so misleading Google has not called it ‘Mobilegeddon’ but every post you find on the web on this topic is referring this update by this name.

Clients call you up and ask questions about the Mobilegeddon Update.  By just reading a few posts some of them  exhibit an aura of  see I know it all.  Its all over the web .

But, has Google announced in any of their blog posts that they are calling this change as the Mobilegeddon Update, The way they announced the Panda and the Penguin algorithm? The answer is NO.

Search Engine Land has nicknamed it as Mobilegeddon . See the snapshot of the SEL Blog Post  below.

Mobilegeddon -SEL

You can see the no. of posts referring to this change as the 'Mobilegeddon' in the image below:

Mobilegeddon

Please note that this name is given to this change by Search Engine Land and not by Google. 

It reminds me of how the Local search Update got famous as the Pigeon Algorithm or Pigeon Update because Search Engine Land named it so.

Google / SEO - 04/22/2015

What Google Has To Say About Mobile Rankings And Mobile Friendliness

Google published a blog post on  21st  April 2015 and confirmed that with mobile phones increasingly becoming the primary way for people to search the Internet, we want to ensure that when you search on Google you find content that is not just relevant and timely, but also easy to read and interact with on smaller mobile screens.

According to Google visitors abandon websites that aren’t mobile friendly at higher rates. And research shows 74% of users say they are more likely to return to a mobile-friendly site.

In February 2015, Google published a blog post mentioning that they want more mobile friendly websites in the search results.

Two important major announcements made by Google in February 2015 blog post were:

  • Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, meaning more mobile-friendlysites in search results.
  • We will begin to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed.

Google’s mobile ranking will now use mobile-friendliness as a signal that weighs in favor of pages that are formatted for mobile phones, like the image on the right.

 Google’s Mobilegeddon , Mobile Rankings And Mobile Friendliness

Points To Take A Note Of :

  • Back in November, Google introduced a “mobile-friendly badge” to notify users when a link in search results led to a mobile friendly-page, andprovided resources to help webmasters become mobile-friendly.
  • Google has started rolling out the change to take into account whether a site is mobile-friendly when Google ranks search results on mobile phones.
  • This change will be one of the 200 ranking factors and  non-mobile-friendly sites won’t disappear from mobile Search results—they may still rank high if they hold great content the user wants.
  • If you use Google search on your mobile phone, you can now more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.
  • In just the two months since Google announced this change, Google says they have seen a 4.7 percentage point uptick in the proportion of sites that are mobile friendly, and we hope to see even more in the coming months.
  • Webmasters can check if their site is mobile-friendly by examining individual pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test or check the status of the entire site through the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools. Once a site becomes mobile-friendly, Google will automatically re-process those pages (and webmasters can expedite the process by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index).
Google / Mobile / SEO - 04/22/2015

What Is Net Neutrality As Per The Consultation Paper Published By The Telecom Regulatory Authority Of India (TRAI)

The Telecom Regulatory Authority Of India (TRAI) published a Consultation Paper On Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) services  on 27th March, 2015.

The objective of this Consultation Paper (CP) was to analyse the implications of the growth of OTTs and consider whether or not changes are required in the current regulatory framework

Telecom service providers (TSPs) offering fixed and mobile telephony are currently being overwhelmed by online content, known as over-the-top (OTT) applications and services. The term over-the-top (OTT) refers to applications and services which are accessible over the internet and ride on operators’ networks offering internet access services e.g. social networks, search engines, amateur video aggregation sites etc. The best known examples of OTT are Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, Chat On, Snapchat, Instagram, Kik, Google Talk, Hike, Line, WeChat, Tango, ecommerce sites (Amazon, Flipkart etc.),Ola, Facebook messenger, Black Berry Messenger, iMessage, online video games and movies (Netflix, Pandora).

It is becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to know if there is an economic difference in connecting various networks via a land phone, cell phone, or a computer. In fact, young users find it difficult to distinguish among these three networks; from their perspective, all that matters is connectivity. They visualize these not as a layered and interconnected series of discreet networks, but as an organic whole.

Carriage is separated from content in internet networks, enabling OTT content and application service providers to deal directly with end users. TSPs are excluded from the said transactions, with no control over the content or the application. The characteristics of OTT services are such that TSPs realise revenues solely from the increased data usage of the internet-connected customers for various applications (henceforth, apps).

The TSPs do not realise any other revenues, be it for carriage or bandwidth. They are also not involved in planning, selling, or enabling OTT apps. On the other hand, OTT providers make use of the TSPs’ infrastructure to reach their customers and offer products/services that not only make money for them but also compete with the traditional services offered by TSPs. Leave aside TSPs, these apps also compete with brick and mortar rivals e.g. e-commerce sites, banking etc. Currently, the major sources of internet traffic are Google, Yahoo, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Windows Live, eBay, Wikipedia.org, msn.com and Craigslist, in that order.

These portals are not owned by the networks   are capturing millions of user connectivity hours. Apart from web content and social media, OTT communications and OTT media are now increasingly playing a major role in the internet domain.   The affordability of smartphones (because of declining price) and the upgradation of access networks by the TSPs are among the important factors contributing to OTT growth. Digitalization of content has reduced conservation, reproduction and distribution costs, which, in turn, has promoted the explosive growth in the supply of online content.

Classification Of Internet- TRAI

The growth of traffic apart, the OTT applications have created an increasing demand for faster broadband speed, which translates into a need for huge investments in network up-gradation by the TSPs.  It is thus becoming clear that, in future, the provision of services by OTT players will impact revenues of network operators insofar as their current business models are concerned. This has already started happening in some developed countries. And, these developments have implications for the Operations Support System and Business Support System (OSS/BSS) of the communication systems used by the TSPs to support end-to-end telecom services.

The public internet that started in the 1980s has grown in scope over the last three decades. In its current form, it has the added ability to carry the entire gamut of services that are required to be delivered to a consumer of telecom services. It allows a telecom subscriber to access almost all the services required for information, education and entertainment.

What is Net Neutrality (NN)? 

Net neutrality (NN) is generally construed to mean that TSPs must treat all internet traffic on an equal basis, no matter its type or origin of content or means used to transmit packets. All points in a network should be able to connect to all other points in the network and  providers should be able to deliver traffic from one point to another seamlessly, without any differentiation on speed, access or price. The principle simply means that all internet traffic should be treated equally.

In USA, FCC has defined Network, or "net" neutrality as another way to refer to open internet principles. The open internet is the internet where consumers can make their own choices about what applications and services to use, and where consumers are free to decide what content they want to access, create, or share with others.

Currently, NN is a topic of great debate across the world. At one level, it is being linked to the right to freedom of expression and the right to information. The underlying idea of an open internet is that all internet resources and the means to operate on it are easily accessible to all. It effectively renders the network carrier a dumb pipe i.e. intelligence of management and operation of communication must lie at the end points of the network and not in the network.

Net Neutrality

It has been suggested that to ensure a thriving and neutral Internet, the following issues need to be addressed:

  1. The Internet must be kept open and neutral. Reachability between all endpoints connected to the Internet, without any form of restriction, must be maintained.
  2.  All data traffic should be treated on an equitable basis no matter its sender, recipient, type, or content. All forms of discriminatory traffic management, such as blocking or throttling should be prohibited.
  3. Network service providers should refrain from any interference with internet users’ freedom to access content (including applications of their choice)
  4. There should be restricted use of packet inspection software (including storage and re-use of associated data) to control traffic.
  5. Complete information on reasonable traffic management practices and justifications for the same must be accessible and available to the public. TSPs should be transparent and accountable to any changes in practices.
  6. Non-neutral treatment of traffic for “voluntary” law enforcement purposes must be prohibited unless there is a legal basis for it.

According to the  “THE ECONOMIST”, January 31, 2015

NET NEUTRALITY Net neutrality is a slippery concept. The term, coined by Tim Wu underlies the basic principle that has led to the success of internet- businesses that operate the network may not discriminate between different data packets. This ensures that innovators or content developers do not need to ask permission for new projects, making internet a collection of a large amount of information, analysis, opinions and services with no sole content provider or regulator.

However, with the internet becoming more crowded and improvement in traffic management tools, net neutrality is difficult to sustain. These new technologies allow the network operator to identify the traffic they are transmitting and scrutinizing, stopping or slowing down spam and other such traffic. Network operators can now create lanes of different speeds to not only manage their traffic, but make more profits.

The question that needs to be answered is that who will pay these profits- the consumers or the content providers owning majority traffic? Why should capacity-hungry services like those sites that stream videos not pay when they take up majority of the traffic capacity, especially when they are earning from it? On the other hand, many argue that without net neutrality laws, toll booths and check points will spring up all across the network, making it less attractive to new content providers and developers.

They fret that network operators will abuse their market power for maximizing profits. This might, in the long run, impinge upon the freedom to impart and receive information without any interference. The operators on the other hand argue that the increasing internet traffic can sustained by investments in upgradation of networks which will be possible by increase in profits. The recent Latvian proposal allows paid fast lanes, “provided that sufficient network capacity is available so that the availability and general quality of internet access services are not impaired in a material manner”. The next network neutrality debate is over ‘zero-rating’, i.e. customer access to certain websites without charging them for data usage.

This will, some argue is a great way to allow customers to access these services. However, who will choose these sites and on what basis- learning basis or on popularity? This will make it difficult for competitors to compete and benefits a particular company by creating its monopoly in the service. Regulators in Slovenia and Netherlands recently banned certain forms of zero-rating. Micro-regulation can lead to adverse impact in the industry, and detailed rules and utility- type regulations might not be the correct approach. Broader rules, such as insisting that a provider’s basic services must not be very slow can be a better option. Competition between network providers will also lead to better services and reduce exploitation of market power.

You can download the full consultaion paper on

http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReaddata/ConsultationPaper/Document/OTT-CP-27032015.pdf

News - 04/17/2015

Google Algorithm Will Give Priority To Mobile-Friendly Sites Starting 21st April 2015

Google has always put the user at the helm when it comes to search. When it comes to search results Google focuses on the user and when it comes to updating the search algorithm it’s the user behaviour which becomes the focal point.

In February 2015, Google published a blog post mentioning that they want more mobile friendly websites in the search results.

Two important major announcements made by Google in the blog post were:

  1.  Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, meaning more mobile-friendly sites in search results.
  2.  We will begin to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed.

Google Algorithm to find mobile friendly sites for search results

Google has clearly stated that starting  21st April 2015, they will be expanding the use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.

Google resources available online to check and test the mobile-friendliness of a website are as follows:

Other Resources answering the following questions:

  1. Why make a website mobile-friendly?
  2. How do I start?
  3. What are the top three things I should know when building a site for mobile devices?
  4. How much does it cost to build a site for mobile devices?
  5. What should I think about when working with a developer?
  6. What are the top three mistakes beginners want to avoid?
  7. What are the next steps?

Related Posts:

Google / Mobile / SEO - 03/28/2015

SEO In 2015: There is no such thing as, NEW SEO or Old SEO. SEO is SEO.

It is time to wind up 2014 and welcome 2015 and march ahead with the lessons learnt in the past year. The Digital World is ever evolving and especially the arena of Search Engine Optimization is the most critically acclaimed and a service which gets predicted as dead at the end of every year, especially post Panda and Penguin algorithm updates at Google.But, as usual we at WebPro Technologies have always remained positive about its need for every website hosted on the WWW . Hence, at WebPro Technologies it is that time of the year when SEO business targets are set for the coming year. We again state that SEO is again going to be one of our major services for 2015 along with Social Media services, Content Writing and Email Info Campaigns for our current client base and the prospective future clients which we are very positive and hopeful about in the coming year.

Let us understand why SEO will always be needed as long as people use search engines.

Search engines know that if they do not give quality results to the users then the users will look for other options and stop using their search engine. We have seen in the past that search engines like Altavista, Hotbot, lycos , Yahoo, etc. (The search options available in early 2000) all got extinct as they did not succeed in upgrading their algorithms with the pace with which the spammers were misusing it. Google has been comparatively successful and has tried to combat the spam and is always trying to improve the search results with time.

There is no such thing as:
NEW SEO or Old SEO.
SEO is SEO.

As the old saying “people do not change, they reveal who they are” Similarly SEO is not changing but as the algorithms are getting more sophisticated and are able to see through the spam and gimmicks used by immature and black hat SEOs, its true meaning and purpose is getting highlighted with every update in the search algorithms.

SEO is changing for people who did not understand the true meaning of SEO and used tricks to gain search presence rather than having a correct approach towards reaching there.

SEO is changing for those website owners who wanted cheap options and hence put their trust in so called link builders instead of having an SEO culture in their organization.

SEO is changing for those website owners who have burnt their fingers in the past with the launch of the Panda and Penguin updates.

W3C is the main organization which establishes the World Wide Web Standards. Google and all the search engines follow the WWW standards but the Vice Versa is not true.

Hence as the law of Transitivity states if a=b and b=c then a=c.Similarly if we follow the W3C norms for web development and since Google algorithms are also becoming sophisticated in verifying these norms on websites then we in the long run we take care of on-page SEO automatically.

Ideal SEO campaigns have always focused on the following aspects:

On Page Factors:

· Title Tags

· Description Tags

· Suggestions for landing pages to make them more effective

· Work on the site architecture and navigation

· Image optimization

· Making the maximum benefit from videos on the site

· Header Tags

· Working on the content to ensure that it falls in the category of quality content

Off Page Factors and Quality Web Presence:

· Integrating Social Media

· Social Media sites focused are Twitter, Google+ profile and pages , Facebook Business Page and Linkedin Profile

· Guiding the in house staff on how to use social media effectively to establish trust and authority

· Guidance on how to develop a blog and maintain it

· Improve on the quality of existing inbound links to the site by working on the details about the domain authority, Anchor Text and the relevant linked page from the external site.

· Work on cleaning the link profile of non topical links.

· Help in creating and monitoring a social media and content development strategy.

Local Search:

· Adding the details to Google Places and Google Maps

· Integrate the Google Places account with the Google+ Business Page

· Suggesting methods by which you can encourage customers to write reviews

· Optimize for Local intent keywords for organic search

Other Technical Factors:

· Set the canonical issues

· Robots.txt

· XML Sitemaps

· Add Structured Data in the form of Microformats and Microdata wherever applicable on the site

· Customized 404 (Page Not Found) Page

· Work on Improving the Site Speed

· Add Authorship Markup to the blog

· Add Twitter Cards and FaceBook open Graph meta tags to the blog

· Guide the web developer to implement microformats or schemas for products and reviews.

All the factors mentioned above work together and in unison to influence the rankings. On-page optimization lays the foundation stone for the edifice , the off-page optimization influence the popularity and affect the stability and improvement of the rankings achieved and the technical factors influence the search engines to crawl and index the website efficiently.

All this cannot be achieved in a day. SEO is an ongoing process and the website needs to be tweaked and tuned as per the changing algorithms of the search engines in order to adapt the site to the changing scenarios so that it can withstand the algoquakes and maintain the visibility.

I think these aspects (especially the on-page ) have been applicable since the time the search engines have started. Hence, the SEO in 2015 is not new but the algorithms are more sophisticated to see thru the spam in the way these factors have been implemented to trick search engines by spammers. Hence in a way we can say that the algorithms are new.

Genuine SEOs are implementing these aspects as per W3C since early 2000. Yes the off page optimization does vary and widen as per the user behaviour . In 2000 social media was not a rage online hence it was not a part of the SEO campaigns. The off-page and Technical factors do get tweaked with time but the basic approach remains the same. The off-page factors get affected by major user behaviour changes and the technical factors get affected as per the sophistication in the algorithms and how this data will be fetched by search engine bots from the servers.

Keeping this the basic approach to SEO in 2015 still remains the same but the algorithms are more sophisticated and we need to be more systematic in the execution of the above mentioned factors. We also need to be more patient for the results to accrue as though the indexing is faster by the search engines , the competition is also increasing at an alarming rate with billions of websites being launched on a regular basis.

Hence in 2015 it is very necessary to have an integrated digital presence by focusing on :

· SEO

· Social Media

· Content

· Email Campaigns

Only when all the above mentioned media are implemented together a certain online reputation can be created.

When your potential customer sees your website ranking for the searches he made on the search engine and then also checks the social media for the buzz and finds the presence of your business and reads what his contacts had to say and also get an email from you in his inbox giving more information it is surely going to register in his mind and will surely consider when he takes a decision related to the products and services you have to offer.

The consistency in our thought process and our approach towards SEO is proved by the blog posts we have written in the past. These posts are testimony to the fact that we still believe in what we do. Our basic approach to SEO still remains the same but it has become more systematic and every passing year since 2000 has just made us more confident giving a new lease of life to our services, despite the xn posts on the blogosphere about SEO being dead.

Some of our past year end posts which prove the consistency in our approach towards SEO Services offered by us are as follows:

Dec. 2010 : SEO And Online Presence In 2011

Dec. 2011: Saying Bye to SEO 2011 and A Very Big Hi to SEO 2012

Dec. 2012: Points To Ponder On For SEO 2013

Nov. 2012:  The Evolving Face Of SEO - 14 SEO Facts For 2013

Dec. 2013: SEO 2014 The Year Of Positive SEO And The Survival Of The Fittest

Google / SEO - 12/28/2014

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At WebPro Technologies, our content reflects over two decades of experience in SEO and digital strategy. We believe that valuable content is built on accuracy, clarity, and insight—and that requires human judgment at every step.

From 2024 onwards, we have been using AI tools selectively to brainstorm ideas, explore perspectives, and refine language, but AI is never the final author. Every article is researched, fact-checked, and edited by our team, ensuring relevance, accuracy, and originality. AI supports our workflow, but the responsibility for quality and credibility remains entirely human.

This hybrid approach allows us to combine the efficiency of technology with the depth of human expertise, so our readers get content that is both informative and trustworthy.

At WebPro, we see AI not as a replacement for human creativity, but as a tool that helps us raise the standard of excellence in the content we share.

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