Google Reader Will Not Track Google Search Pages

End of January, the Google Reader team was officially announcing that Google Reader was able to track the updates on any Website out there. "You name it, we have it" is kind of what Google Reader seems to be telling us. Oh good, because there are some very specific pages I have been longing to track for a long time: Google Search results pages.

To do so, I pasted the url of a search query on my name in the "Add a subscription" box. Once the page submitted, Google Reader warns me that there seems to be no existing feed for that Website. Hence an invitation to create one for me:



Sure thing!



And then you have to wait a bit to see feed items start to pop out from your feed reader... That is, if Google Reader would actually be tracking ANY Web page on the Web, which is actually not the case:



Google pretends to be on a mission to break us free from lack of information. But on the other hand, it sabotages its own tools to prevent anyone from having too much information about Google, the information provider.

Video SEO: Automatic Captions Will Change Google's SERPs

A few days ago, Youtube announced the launch of automatically generated captions for videos. Basically, you don't have to bother with Capiontube anymore (link in this article) to manually create captions for videos, export them, and import them in Youtube.

To help address this challenge, we've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect (check out the video below for an amusing example), but even when they're off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time.

Pretty cool! However, as a video marketer, this feature is making me lose an edge in the service I offer to some companies to boost the visibility of their video on Google's SERPs. Captions are a very little-known trick to add data to your video, thus making it more discoverable. How does that work?

Traffic drives more traffic?

I remember days when I would struggle to get a few visitors on my site. Getting 10 visits from a link was a personal victory! Something to be proud of. Simply because traffic is really hard to get.

Content and network are king.

Content because there are no reasons to click on a link that is uninspiring. I read hundreds of feeds every morning, I don't waste my time with dull or redundant news. Everybody has the same behavior regarding news items.

Network because search engines index billions of pages, and the likelihood of your pages showing on top of SERPs is really low. However, you can connect with other peeps online who will sometimes have a look at your work. This is how you slowly start to get some activity on your Website.

Then I would like other bloggers' opinion on this: I get the feeling that the more traffic you get... Well the more traffic you get. Is getting traffic an indicator for search engines that your page is worth taking a look? Is SEM about the more you get, the more you get? I'm seriously wondering this myself, but I need the opinion of an expert.



opinions anyone?