NEW Google Backlink Tool: Google Sidewiki
October 6, 2009 by admin
Filed under Marketing Tips
Officially launched on September 23, 2009, Google Sidewiki enables people, or more specifically those who have the Google Toolbar installed on their IE or Firefox,Chrome,Safari web browsers, to make and share comments about websites and web pages with other people, particularly those who also have the toolbar installed on their browsers.
Truth be told, Google Sidewiki is MORE THAN just a commenting system. You can utilize this powerful commenting system to promote your brand and build backlinks in the process. It is a system for annotating pages across the web and is envisioned to become a community where experts can share their expert opinions and high quality comments.
The Google Sidewiki comes in the form of a browser sidebar which, when expanded, shows comments as well as blog posts that Google has deemed appropriate and/or related to a particular web page. Although anyone will be able to comment on a webpage, not everyone’s comment will appear.
Yes, you read that right. Although Google Sidewiki enables anyone and everyone to leave their comments on the websites they visit, not all their comments get displayed. So, which comments get displayed and which do not? From my understanding comments that do appear will be deemed as expert commentation from users with a high quality score. (sounds like adwords)…
Well, Google has not released an official and clear-cut gauge regarding the factors involved in determining which comments will end up on the Google Sidewiki. What Google did say is that Google Sidewiki uses multiple signals based on the quality of the comments, the authors’ reputations, as well as user-contributed signals (i.e., voting and flagging) in determining which comments get displayed and in which order. This selection process, according to Google, ensures that only the highest quality and relevant entries will appear in the Sidewiki.
So, just how does Google gauge a comment’s quality? Determining a comment’s quality is generally based on the language used. Note that “language” here does not pertain to the various languages of nations and people but rather it pertains to how the comments/entries are composed/constructed.
It looks like Google has in its disposal a language sophistication detector of some sort that can gauge the degree of sophistication of statement constructions in 14 different languages.
And, apparently, Sidewiki gives more weight/credit to entries that use sophisticated language. For example, “This page stinks!” and “This site rocks!” are not considered as expert languages.
With regards to author reputation, Google takes into account the consensus about a particular entry based on the votes and flags given to it by other users.
In addition, Google also takes into consideration how long a particular author/user has had a Google Profile and how long he/she has been commenting.
Can you see how this tool can be used to market your brand and build powerful backlinks while doing so? Researching related niche websites and providing expert commentation and you will be rewarded for your insight threefold.
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