WebProNews

Tag: Search

  • SEO DOs And DONT’S According To Google: Mixed Signals?

    Google is talking a lot about SEO these days. In a recent webmaster discussion at SXSW, Google’s Matt Cutts spoke about some changes Google is working on that would seem to make SEO matter less, in that sites with good, quality content that don’t do a lot of SEO could potentially rank just as well, or better than a bigger site with a bigger SEO budget and a lot of SEO tactics implemented. The whole thing appears to be more about Google getting better at not helping sites just because they employ a lot of grey hat/borderline black hat tactics. Google has always tried to do this, but based on what Cutts said, it sounds like they’re about to get better at it.

    Changes to Google’s algorithm have the ability to make or break businesses. Google is sending out the signal that you should worry less about the current SEO trends, and more about producing great content, and that they’re “leveling the playing field” for sites that don’t pay as much attention to SEO. Obviously great content is a positive, but at the same time, Google is showing us each month all of the changes it is making, and all the while, providing tips about how to do certain SEO things better. Is Google sending mixed signals? Just how much should webmasters worry about optimization? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Google Changes To Come

    WebProNews spoke with former Googler and Google Webmaster Central creator Vanessa Fox about it, after she wrote her own blog post, sharing her thoughts about Google’s approach to SEO. In her post, she wrote, “Some are worried that Google will begin to penalize sites that have implemented search engine optimization techniques. My thoughts? I think that some site owners should worry. But whether or not you should depends on what you mean by search engine optimization.”

    “Matt talked about finding ways to surface smaller sites that may be poorly optimized, if, in fact, those sites have the very best content,” she said in the post. “This is not anything new from Google. They’ve always had a goal to rank the very best content, regardless of how well optimized or not it may be. And I think that’s the key. If a page is the very best result for a searcher, Google wants to rank it even if the site owner has never heard of title tags. And Google wants to rank it if the site owner has crafted the very best title tag possible. The importance there is that it’s the very best result.”

    There has been a lot of discussion about it in the SEO community, and there will no doubt be plenty around SES New York this week. Some of the talk has been blown out of proportion, and Cutts appears to feel that the press has contributed to this. For the record, when we first reported on it, we linked to the full audio from the panel, as Cutts provided, and since then, he’s linked to the full transcript for those who don’t have time to listen to an hour’s worth of audio. We’ve also pointed to this in previous coverage. Cutts seems to have given his seal of approval to Fox’s take on the whole thing:

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    Rob Snell did a full transcript of the recent #sxsw session with Danny Sullivan, Duane Forrester, & me: http://t.co/RCGR99Ff 21 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @yoast
    Joost de Valk    @mattcutts ah thanks! That might come in useful against the press who are taking some quotes WAY out of context. 21 hours ago via Osfoora for Mac ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    @yoast yup, totally agree. Vanessa did a good write up too. 16 hours ago via Twitter for Android ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    Following is a snippet from our previous article, discussing the Google changes with Fox, because it’s highly relevant to the larger story:

    If you’ve listened to or read what was said, you’ll notice that the whole thing was in response to a question about mom and pops, which might make you wonder if brand is a significant part of what’s at play.

    “I don’t think it’s about just mom and pop vs. big brands,” Fox tells WebProNews. “Lots of big brands don’t know the first thing about SEO. I think (total guess on my part) the sites that will be negatively impacted are those that focus on algorithms and build content/sites based on the things what they think the algorithms are looking for. The kind of sites where someone didn’t say ‘I want this page to rank for query X. How can this page best answer what the searcher is asking about X’ but instead said ‘I want this page to rank for query X. How many times should I repeat X in my title, heading, content on the page, internal links…”

    Vanessa Fox Talks to WebProNews“I think it’s still useful (and not negative) to make sure the words that searchers are using are on the page, but some sites go well beyond this and get so caught up in what they think the algorithms are doing that they forget to make sure the content is useful,” she adds.

    “As far as sites that will see a positive from this, I think it will likely be both small sites (B&B in Napa that titles their home page ‘home’ vs. an affiliate site that sells wine gift baskets) and large brands (sites that use a lot of Flash),” says Fox. “I think foundational SEO practices (like those I describe in my article) will continue to be beneficial for sites.”

    When she talks about SEO in her article, by the way, she says she’s talking about “using search data to better understand your audience and solve their problems (by creating compelling, high-quality content about relevant topics to your business)” and “understanding how search engine crawl and index sites and ensuring that your site’s technical infrastructure can be comprehensively crawled and indexed.”

    Interestingly, though Google always puts out webmaster tips and videos, there seem to have been quite a few nuggets making their way out of the company’s blogs and YouTube channels over the past week or so – the time since the SXSW session took place.

    Last week, for example, Google’s Developer Programs Tech Lead Maile Ohye talked about Pagination and SEO, complete with a 37-page slideshow:

    In fact, it looks that this might be part of a new series of SEO tips from Ohye, as another one has come out about SEO mistakes and “good ideas”:

    SEO DOs And DON’TS, According To Google

    According to Google, these are some things you should not do in your SEO efforts:

    1. Having no value proposition: Try not to assume that a site should rank #1 without knowing why it’s helpful to searchers (and better than the competition 🙂

    2. Segmented approach: Be wary of setting SEO-related goals without making sure they’re aligned with your company’s overall objectives and the goals of other departments. For example, in tandem with your work optimizing product pages (and the full user experience once they come to your site), also contribute your expertise to your Marketing team’s upcoming campaign. So if Marketing is launching new videos or a more interactive site, be sure that searchers can find their content, too.

    3. Time-consuming workarounds: Avoid implementing a hack rather than researching new features or best practices that could simplify development (e.g., changing the timestamp on an updated URL so it’s crawled more quickly instead of easily submitting the URL through Fetch as Googlebot).

    4. Caught in SEO trends: Consider spending less time obsessing about the latest “trick” to boost your rankings and instead focus on the fundamental tasks/efforts that will bring lasting visitors.

    5. Slow iteration: Aim to be agile rather than promote an environment where the infrastructure and/or processes make improving your site, or even testing possible improvements, difficult.

    On the flipside, this is what Google says you should do:

    1. Do something cool: Make sure your site stands out from the competition — in a good way!

    2. Include relevant words in your copy: Try to put yourself in the shoes of searchers. What would they query to find you? Your name/business name, location, products, etc., are important. It’s also helpful to use the same terms in your site that your users might type (e.g., you might be a trained “flower designer” but most searchers might type [florist]), and to answer the questions they might have (e.g., store hours, product specs, reviews). It helps to know your customers.

    3. Be smart about your tags and site architecture: Create unique title tags and meta descriptions; include Rich Snippets markup from schema.org where appropriate. Have intuitive navigation and good internal links.

    4. Sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools: Help us communicate with you, especially when we notice something awry with your site.

    5. Attract buzz: Natural links, +1s, likes, follows… In every business there’s something compelling, interesting, entertaining, or surprising that you can offer or share with your users. Provide a helpful service, tell fun stories, paint a vivid picture and users will share and reshare your content.

    6. Stay fresh and relevant: Keep content up-to-date and consider options such as building a social media presence (if that’s where a potential audience exists) or creating an ideal mobile experience if your users are often on-the-go.

    Of course, Google has continued to put out the usual Webmaster videos from Matt Cutts. He did one, or example, on meta tags, talking about how “you shouldn’t spend any time on the meta keywords tag,” but how Google does use the meta description tag.

    In that video, Cutts says, “So if you’re a good SEO, someone who is paying attention to conversion and not just rankings on trophy phrases, then you might want to pay some attention to testing different meta descriptions that might result in more clickthrough and possibly more conversions.” Emphasis added.

    “So don’t do anything deceptive, like you say you’re about apples when you’re really about red widgets that are completely unrelated to apples,” he adds. “But if you have a good and a compelling meta description, that can be handy.”

    The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

    This advice is basically in line with the position Google has had for years, which is also inline with what Fox had to say. It doesn’t sound like much has changed, but Google is getting better at distinguishing the good from the bad. Or at least that’s what they want SEOs to believe.

    I’m not saying they don’t have things in the works that are improvements, but Google has a broader issue with relevancy in results, and it would certainly be inaccurate to say that nothing has changed. Google makes changes to its algorithm every single day, and these days they are even going so far as to list at least some of the changes publicly each month. These lists are invaluable to webmasters looking to boost their Google presence, because while Google may say to not chase specific changes, they also show webmasters the areas where Google actually is changing how it does things. Ignoring them is foolish. That doesn’t mean you have to exploit them in a black hat kind of way, but you can certainly be aware of them, and look for tweaks that may have a direct effect on your current strategy.

    For example, if Google says it is putting fresher image results in image searches, perhaps you should consider how visual your content is.

    It will be interesting to see what this month’s changes are, as well as the changes Cutts discussed at SXSW. Will they make Google’s results more relevant? If enough sites follow the advice Google is giving, will the results get better? On the other hand, how much will it matter if you’re following all of Google’s advice if Google’s getting better at “leveling the playing field’ for those who aren’t paying attention to SEO at all? Those who aren’t paying attention to SEO probably aren’t reading articles like this or following Google’s webmaster blogs and videos. All of that said, doing the things Google says to do probably won’t hurt.

    What do you think? Should you spend less time worrying about SEO trends, like Google suggests? Let us know in the comments.

  • Spring Equinox Celebrated With Google Doodle

    Today is the Spring Equinox, or more popularly the first day of Spring. Flowers are in bloom, sinuses are clogged with allergies. It’s the most beautiful but often ominous time for a guy like me, where itchy eyes are sure to follow the chirping birds and growing vegetation.

    But I’ll give in and agree – we should all celebrate this special day. Google sure has, with a Google Doodle based on the stylings of influential Finnish fashion and textiles company Marimekko, who is known for their bright, but simple design. You’ve probably seen their influence everywhere – even if you weren’t aware of it at the time. Today’s doodle is based on the design of eight designers:

    The playful Marimekko doodles form the Google logo with a joyful interplay of elements of iconic Marimekko printed textiles by eight renowned designers: Maija Isola, Kristina Isola, Erja Hirvi, Maija Louekari, Aino-Maija Metsola, Teresa Moorhouse, Jenni Tuominen and Katsuji Wakisaka.

    Today’s Spring Equinox is one of the two equinoxes of each year (the other of course happening in the fall). An equinox occurs at the precise moment when the tilt of the Earth’s axis isn’t pointed away or toward the Sun. The point in which this occurs varies year-to-year, and in 2012 it occurs at 5:14 UT. The Spring Equinox is also not always on March 20th, although it has been for the last 4 years and will be for the next few years to come.

    Although common knowledge would tell you that the Spring Equinox means that on this day, night and day are of exact equal lengths, that’s not entirely accurate. The day of equal day and night, called the equilux, actually occurs a few days before the Spring Equinox. Equilux is the day, and equinox is that specific point where the axis tilt is centered.

    “We are thrilled about this creative collaboration that got started when Google Vice President Marissa Mayer visited our textile printing factory in Helsinki. Marimekko design is all about understanding the beauty of life just as we encounter it every day – celebrating everyday moments and the special characteristics and nuances of the different seasons. Thus, with the First Day of Spring and Fall doodles, we want to inspire people to free their own creativity and have fun with it – every day and each season,” says Mika Ihamuotila, President and CEO of Marimekko.

  • Google Local Ranking Factors Listed By New Bizible Study

    Bizible, a company created by former Bing/Microsoft adCenter staff, has put together an interesting analysis of local ranking factors in Google, after surveying 22 local business categories and 22 US cities, and searching Google for the given localized term (i.e. “Seattle photographer”).

    “We grabbed the first 30 results in Google Local and all the local results from the integrated web results (1/3/5/7 packs, universal results, etc.) We then inspected each Places page for all of the ranking factors we could extract (see below for the complete list),” Bizible explains. “In total, we analyzed 477 queries, 14,309 individual search results, and 457,888 data points. We removed the seven queries that did not generate integrated local results, like ‘Phoenix insurance.’ Note that our analysis was performed before the recent ‘Venice’ Google search update in late February. We will run a followup study to see what has changed since then.”

    Venice involved improvements to ranking for local results, according to Google, who said in a blog post in February, “This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.”

    For the universal or “integrated” results, as Bizible calls them, the top five ranking factors, according to the study, are:

    1. Having the primary category match a broader category of the search category was associated with a 1.42 improvement in rank. For example, primary category is set to “restaurant” and the search category was “pizza.”

    2. Having the search category or a synonym in the business name was associated with a 0.64 improvement in rank.

    3. Having the search category or a synonym in “at a glance” was associated with a 0.36 improvement in rank.

    4. Having five or more Google reviews was associated with a 0.31 improvement in rank.

    5. Having photos (atleast 1) was associated with a 0.25 improvement in rank.

    The study lists a top 10 for pure local results:

    1. Having five or more Google reviews was associated with a 1.47 improvement in rank.

    2. Having the search city in “at a glance” was associated with a 1.42 improvement in rank.

    3. Having the search category or a synonym in in review content was associated with a 0.97 improvement in rank.

    4. Having the search category or a synonym in the business description was associated with a 0.85 improvement in rank.

    5. Having the search category or a synonym in “at a glance” was associated with a 0.85 improvement in rank.

    6. Having the primary category match the search category was associated with a 0.79 improvement in rank.

    7. Having the search category or a synonym in in the business name was associated with a 0.75 improvement in rank.

    8. Having a secondary business category that was a broader category than the search category was associated with a 0.68
    improvement in rank. i.e. secondary category is “restaurant” when searching for “Seattle pizza.”

    9. Having at least one photo was associated with a 0.66 improvement in rank.

    10. Owner verified was associated with a 0.52 improvement in rank.

    The study has a number of “surprsing takeaways” associated with the findings as well. I’d encourage you to read the report for additional insight.

    Bizible says it looked at each ranking factor in isolation and accounted for variation in competitiveness across search terms. The firm says this study is only one in a series of five. The next ones will cover on-site optimization, citations, reviews, and in-bound links and off-site respectively.

    Hat tip to Andrew Shotland.

  • Google’s Matt Cutts: Good SEOs Pay Attention To Conversion

    Earlier, we posted a story about a new video Google uploaded, where Matt Cutts talks about how Google uses meta tags. Given some of the recent discussion in the SEO community, it seemed like a couple of things Cutts said in the video were worth a separate article.

    As you may know, Cutts spoke at SXSW recently, and mentioned some changes Google is working on, which would “level the playing field” for mom and pops, compared to bigger companies with big SEO budgets. The thinking is that as long as you have good, relevant content, it doesn’t matter that it’s not optimized for search engines – or at least not as much.

    We’ll have to wait and see just how Google is approaching this. Former Googler Vanessa Fox, who created Google Webmaster Central shared some interesting insight on Google’s plans, and suggested it’s likely not so much about brands.

    It’s interesting that Cutts would put out a video about the SEO implications of meta tags right in the middle of all of this. As a matter of fact, in the video, he says, “So if you’re a good SEO, someone who is paying attention to conversion and not just rankings on trophy phrases, then you might want to pay some attention to testing different meta descriptions that might result in more clickthrough and possibly more conversions.”

    Note: It’s worth noting that the video was actually uploaded all the way back in August, but Google chose today to make it “today’s webmaster video”:

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    Today’s webmaster video: “How much time should I spend on meta tags, and which ones matter?” http://t.co/na6KlEHU 2 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    “So don’t do anything deceptive, like you say you’re about apples when you’re really about red widgets that are completely unrelated to apples,” he adds. “But if you have a good and a compelling meta description, that can be handy.”

    Google has always been against the more deceptive, black hat SEO tactics, and the signals we’re getting are basically that Google is trying to get better at what it’s already tried to be good at for years.

  • Google: Actually, Meta Tags Do Matter.

    Google posted a new Webmaster Help video from Matt Cutts today. The question at hand this time is: How much time should I spend on meta tags, and which ones matter?

    This one is also significant because Cutts submitted the question himself. That means, he felt this was an important enough issue, that even though it wasn’t submitted it by a user, needed to be addressed.

    “So the conventional wisdom a few years ago was that meta tags mattered a whole lot,” says Cutts. “You really had to tweak them and spent a lot of time to get your keywords right, and did you have a space, or a comma between your keywords, and all that kind of stuff. And we’ve mostly evolved past that, but the pendulum might have gone a little bit too far in the other direction, because a lot of people sometimes say, don’t think at all about meta tags. Don’t spend any time whatsoever on them, and so let me give you a more nuanced view.”

    “You shouldn’t spend any time on the meta keywords tag,” he says. “We don’t use it. I’m not aware of any major search engine that uses it these days. It’s a place that people don’t really see when they load the browser, and so a lot of webmasters just keyword stuff there, and so it’s really not all that helpful. So we don’t use meta keywords at all.”

    This is actually not the first time Cutts has posted a video about this topic. There was one from several years ago, where he basically said the same thing about the keywords meta tag. At the time, Google talked about how it used the description meta tag, as well as the meta tags “google,” “robots,” “verify-1,” “content type,” and “refresh”.

    Here’s a chart from Google Webmaster Tools, which breaks down how Google understands different meta tags:

    Google meta tags

    “But we do use the meta description tag,” Cutts continues in the new video. “The meta description is really handy, because if we don’t know what would make a good snippet, and you have something in the meta description tag that would basically give a pretty good answer–maybe it matches what the user typed in or something along those lines, then we do reserve the right to show that meta description tag as the snippet. So we can either show the snippet that might be the keyword in context on the page or the meta description.”

    “Now, if the meta description is really well written and really compelling, then a person who sees it might click through more often,” he says. “So if you’re a good SEO, someone who is paying attention to conversion and not just rankings on trophy phrases, then you might want to pay some attention to testing different meta descriptions that might result in more clickthrough and possibly more conversions. So don’t do anything deceptive, like you say you’re about apples when you’re really about red widgets that are completely unrelated to apples. But if you have a good and a compelling meta description, that can be handy.”

    “There are a lot of other meta tags,” he says. “I think in the metadata for this video, we can link to a really good page of documentation that we had, that sort of talks about which stuff we pay attention to and which stuff we don’t pay attention to. But at a 50,000-foot level, don’t pay attention to the keywords meta tag. But the description meta tag is worth paying attention to.”

    It sounds like SEO still matters.

  • Yandex Now Part Of NASDAQ Internet Index, Launches Real-Time Bidding Ad Model

    Russian search giant Yandex has been added to the NASDAQ Internet Index (Nasdaq:QNET), effective today.

    The NASDAQ Internet Index includes companies in online software, Internet service providers, search engines,
    web hosting, web design, and e-commerce. As of the time of this writing, the index is at 238.18 +3.03‎ (1.29%‎).

    “As the largest Russian internet business, we are pleased that Yandex will now be included in the NASDAQ Internet Index alongside some of the most innovative and influential internet companies in the world. The addition of Yandex to the index is a recognition of our company’s growth and leadership, coupled with the strength of our technology and quality of our employees,” said CEO Arkady Volozh.

    Today, Yandex also announced the release of a new ad model with real-time bidding for public testing.

    “Real-Time Bidding provides us with an entirely new business model that boosts both return on investment for advertisers and advertising revenues for websites,” says Nikolay Danilov, who leads the project. “Advertisers now have an opportunity to target their display ads exclusively to specific audiences while paying exactly what they like. Website owners, on the other hand, can benefit from the auction-based sales that considerably improve their chances to increase revenue from advertising,”

    The company explains the model as advertising systems fighting for the right to serve ads from their advertisers, as opposed to advertisers directly bidding for impressions.

    Last month, Yandex scored a deal with Twitter, and launched new social features.

    When a user visits a page, the system offers the ad systems the opportunity to buy an impression on the page the user is about to view. The systems, the company says, automatically choose the best ad for a particular offer, and make a bid. The system chooses the best bidder, and the user sees the ad that has won the auction.

    The model has been implemented on sites in the Yandex Advertising Network, to serve both search and display ads.

  • New Google Changes: Really A Matter Of Mom And Pop?

    In a recent webmaster Q&A session at SXSW, Google’s Matt Cutts briefly discussed some changes Google is making that will “level the playing field” between smaller, mom and pop sites and “overly optimized” sites, as bigger companies have a lot more money to spend on SEO.

    Former Googler Vanessa Fox, who happens to be the creator of Webmaster Central, wrote an interesting blog post about it, which we discussed in another article about how the changes sound like they fall in line with Google’s greater philosophy of providing high quality sites (which is what the Panda update was all about).

    We reached out to Fox for some additional insight, as hers is particularly unique given her background.

    “I don’t think this is part of Panda,” Fox tells WebProNews. “Google makes hundreds of algorithm changes/introduces new signals/etc. every year. Panda is just one of many. Google just doesn’t name each one (and of course, not all of them are as impactful).”

    She notes, as she hinted at in her own post, that Cutts may have been simplifying things for a non-search audience (SXSW isn’t a search conference like SES or SMX), and says that “it’s possible this isn’t a new anything, but instead is just tweaking of existing signals that look for things like keyword stuffing and link exchanges.”

    Last week, Cutts pointed to the audio. Today he points to a full transcript:

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    Today’s webmaster *audio* is a recording of our #sxsw panel: “Dear Google & Bing: Help Me Rank Better!” http://t.co/ddIH6VX5 3 days ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    Rob Snell did a full transcript of the recent #sxsw session with Danny Sullivan, Duane Forrester, & me: http://t.co/RCGR99Ff 12 minutes ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    If you’ve listened to or read what was said, you’ll notice that the whole thing was in response to a question about mom and pops, which might make you wonder if brand is a significant part of what’s at play.

    “I don’t think it’s about just mom and pop vs. big brands,” Fox says. “Lots of big brands don’t know the first thing about SEO. I think (total guess on my part) the sites that will be negatively impacted are those that focus on algorithms and build content/sites based on the things what they think the algorithms are looking for. The kind of sites where someone didn’t say ‘I want this page to rank for query X. How can this page best answer what the searcher is asking about X’ but instead said ‘I want this page to rank for query X. How many times should I repeat X in my title, heading, content on the page, internal links…”

    “I think it’s still useful (and not negative) to make sure the words that searchers are using are on the page, but some sites go well beyond this and get so caught up in what they think the algorithms are doing that they forget to make sure the content is useful,” she adds.

    “As far as sites that will see a positive from this, I think it will likely be both small sites (B&B in Napa that titles their home page ‘home’ vs. an affiliate site that sells wine gift baskets) and large brands (sites that use a lot of Flash),” says Fox. “I think foundational SEO practices (like those I describe in my article) will continue to be beneficial for sites.”

    When she talks about SEO in her article, by the way, she says she’s talking about “using search data to better understand your audience and solve their problems (by creating compelling, high-quality content about relevant topics to your business)” and “understanding how search engine crawl and index sites and ensuring that your site’s technical infrastructure can be comprehensively crawled and indexed.”

    Whether or not the new changes are directly related to Panda, Google’s Panda-related quality guidelines will probably still be something to keep in mind, with regards to what Matt is talking about.

  • Google Webmaster Central Creator Talks Google’s “New” Google Changes

    Perhaps “anti-SEO” is a little strong, but as previously reported, Google is working on making SEO matter less. At a recent SXSW session, Google’s Matt Cutts discussed (without a lot of details) some changes Google is going to be making to “level the playing field” for mom and pops, in terms of how sites can gain visibility in search.

    “Normally, we don’t sort of pre-announce changes, but there is something we’ve been working on in the last few months, and hopefully in the next couple months or so, or you know, in the coming weeks, we hope to release it,” said Cutts. “And the idea is basically to try and level the playing ground a little bit, so all those people who have sort of been doing, for lack of a better word, ‘over-optimization’ or overly doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little more level.

    Update: Vanessa Fox offered some additional observations to WebProNews. >>> Click here to read the article.

    “So that’s the sort of thing where we try to make the website…the Googlebot smarter, we try to make our relevance more adaptive, so the people who don’t do SEO, we handle that, and then we also start to look at the people who sort of abuse it, whether they throw too many keywords on the page or whether they exchange way too many links, or whatever they’re doing to sort of go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area,” he continued. “So that is something where we continue to pay attention, and continue to work on it…we have several engineers on my team working on that right now.”

    Naturally, many webmasters and SEOs are wondering just what all of this will mean for SEO going forward. Combine that, with a reported strategy of Google’s to greatly expand its direct answer results, which could also slow traffic to some sites.

    Vanessa Fox, the former Googler who built Webmaster Central, offers some perspective in a blog post.

    @vanessafox
    Vanessa Fox    My thoughts on Google’s upcoming “over optimization” algorithm change: http://t.co/qsG4j0rM 10 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    “A lot of people have asked me what this means for those who include search engine optimization as part of their marketing mix,” says Fox in the post. “Some are worried that Google will begin to penalize sites that have implemented search engine optimization techniques. My thoughts? I think that some site owners should worry. But whether or not you should depends on what you mean by search engine optimization.”

    Interestingly, she compares Google’s approach to what the company has been doing with the Panda update, in that it’s about “separating high-quality, useful pages from pages that were just a collection of words about a particular topic.”

    “Matt talked about finding ways to surface smaller sites that may be poorly optimized, if, in fact, those sites have the very best content,” Fox says. “This is not anything new from Google. They’ve always had a goal to rank the very best content, regardless of how well optimized or not it may be. And I think that’s the key. If a page is the very best result for a searcher, Google wants to rank it even if the site owner has never heard of title tags. And Google wants to rank it if the site owner has crafted the very best title tag possible. The importance there is that it’s the very best result.”

    One great point that she brought up is that Cutts was not speaking at a search conference, when he was talking about this. It’s a different audience, in which he may not have gotten as specific about certain things with, as he may have at a conference like SMX Advanced.

    The way Fox talks about it, it almost sounds like he could have even been talking about Panda-related offerings. Remember how Google has made Panda more a part of “its pipelines” recently. Wouldn’t that be part of “making Googlebot smarter,” as Matt put it?

    Fox tells us, however, she doesn’t think what Matt was talking about is part of Panda, though I doubt we’re going to get much more out of Google on the subject, other than the usual monthly lists of changes. Either way, it does seem to fit with the greater philosophy behind Panda, which is really just about returning the best content anyway. More on this topic to come.

  • St. Patrick’s Day Google Doodle And The Google St. Patty’s Day Vibe

    Today, Saturday, March 17, 2012, is St. Patrick’s Day, and Google has a doodle, of course (pictured above). As they often do, Google’s doodle appeared in other parts of the world (like Australia) before making its way here to the U.S.

    As a colleague pointed out, the doodle focuses more on art than on drinking, which has become the true meaning of the holiday to some, despite its cultural and religious origins.

    If you want to compare the doodle to last year’s (which wasn’t so much about drinking either), you can see it in this Google Doodle compilation:

    By the way, in light of Google’s increased push on semantic search and direct answers, it’s worth noting that a Google search for “St. Patty’s Day” returns a direct answer for St. Patrick’s Day:

    Google St. Patty's Day

    Of course, talk and the sharing of imagery and videos related to the holiday are all over the social networks, including Google’s own Google+. In fact, it becomes pretty clear that Google+ is no ghost town if you do a search for St. Patrick’s Day, as you can watch the new posts roll in pretty quickly.

    Here are some videos that are popping up:

    Of course, Google’s Doodle is more about the web search part of Google, and clicking it will simply take you to the query for “St. Patrick’s Day”. Google thinks this Wikipedia entry for St. Patrick’s Day is the best result for that. Do you agree?

  • Google Is Working On Making SEO Matter Less

    At SXSW there was a session called, “Dear Google & Bing: Help Me Rank Better!” As previously reported, Matt Cutts was supposed to be there, but couldn’t make it due to his wife having foot surgery. He was still able to appear remotely, and during the session, he just happened to mention that Google is working on some things that will “level the playing field” for people who just have good content, and don’t focus on much on SEO. Bing’s Duane Forrester also participated as Danny Sullivan moderated.

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    Today’s webmaster *audio* is a recording of our #sxsw panel: “Dear Google & Bing: Help Me Rank Better!” http://t.co/ddIH6VX5 22 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    Here’s the official description for the session:

    If you build it, they might not come, if you haven’t thought about how search engines view your web site. Forget testing for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Search engines are the common browser that everyone uses. The good news is that search engine optimization (SEO) doesn’t mean terrible design or some type of black-magic trickery. Rather, there are good, sensible things that everyone should do that pleases both search engines and human visitors. In this session, representatives from Google and Bing provide this type of advice. They’ll even get you up to speed on the impact that social media is playing on search results. Even better, it’s all Q&A. Bring your top questions about how they rank sites and get answers directly from the source.

    The official SXSW page has the audio for the entire session. Hat tip to Barry Schwartz for pointing to this specific part of it.

    During the Q&A, one webmaster asked how a mom and pop doing its own optimization can stand a chance against all of those who are spending thousands of dollars on SEO.

    “The way that I often think about SEO is that it’s like a coach,” said Cutts. “It’s someone who helps you figure out how to present yourself better. In an ideal world though, you wouldn’t have to think about presenting yourself and whether search engines can crawl your website, because they’d just be so good that it could figure out how to crawl through the Flash, how to crawl through the forms, how to crawl through the javascript, how to crawl through whatever it is. And for the most part, most search engines have made a lot of progress on being able to crawl through that richer content.”

    Regarding the people that are optimizing “really hard” and doing a lot of SEO, Matt says, “Normally, we don’t sort of pre-announce changes, but there is something we’ve been working on in the last few months, and hopefully in the next couple months or so, or you know, in the coming weeks, we hope to release it.”

    “And the idea,” he says, “Is basically to try and level the playing ground a little bit, so all those people who have sort of been doing, for lack of a better word, ‘over-optimization’ or overly doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little more level. So that’s the sort of thing where we try to make the website…the Googlebot smarter, we try to make our relevance more adaptive, so the people who don’t do SEO, we handle that, and then we also start to look at the people who sort of abuse it, whether they throw too many keywords on the page or whether they exchange way too many links, or whatever they’re doing to sort of go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area. So that is something where we continue to pay attention, and continue to work on it…we have several engineers on my team working on that right now.”

    Duane Forrester joked that Bing has some hamsters working on this in the back room, spinning some wheels. He suggested having a great product and being engaged socially. These are strong signals for Bing, he said.

  • Chrome Comes Out Of The Penalty Box, Following Paid Link Fiasco

    Remember when Google was involved in that controversy regarding paid links on blog posts about the company’s Chrome browser? As people had caught wind of what was going on, Google implemented a PageRank penalty on Chrome’s landing page, which knocked it down in search results.

    “In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days,” Google’s Matt Cutts said at the time. “After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page.”

    This was Google’s effort to show others that it would treat its own properties the same as others’. It looked like this had a direct impact on Chrome’s market share, at a time when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was showing signs of improvement.

    The penalty has now been lifted, as the 60-day mark has come. Barry Schwartz reports that Google has confirmed this.

    It will be very interesting to see how Chrome’s market share numbers look after being out of the penalty box for a while.

  • Google Panda Update Not Happening

    Google Panda Update Not Happening

    Every time Google makes some change to its algorithm that webmasters notice, lots of people jump to conclusions that it’s another Panda update. This is simply not the case. In fact, it’s usually not the case.

    Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable is pointing to some discussion in WebmasterWorld where people talk about the possibilities of a new Panda update.

    Luckily, Schwartz has already confirmed with Google that there it was not Panda or a Panda data refresh.

    Google makes changes to is algorithm every day. It makes roughly 500 of them each year.

    In either late March or early April, we should see a big list of changes that Google has made this month. A Panda update was included in February’s list, which Google said refreshed the data in the Panda system, “making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.”

    It’s worth noting that while Google may not have a new Panda update happening right now, the last one was designed to make it more integrated into Google’s piplelines.

    Soon, webmasters may have a whole new round of Google changes to deal with as the company reportedly gets ready to expand its direct answer results.

  • Google Improves Malware Detection For Ads

    Google Improves Malware Detection For Ads

    Google put out a big blog post on Wednesday about its efforts to clean up ads in terms of malware. The company says bad ads are on the decline thanks to said efforts, which include spending millions of dollars building technical architecture and machine learning models to keep malware away from Google ads before they’re served in the first place.

    Here’s a video Google included on how it makes ads better:

    The following list is comprised of things Google says it has improved in its detection systems:

    • Improved “query watch” for counterfeit ads: While anyone can report counterfeit ads, we’ve widened our proactive monitoring of sensitive keywords and queries related to counterfeit goods which allows us to catch more counterfeit ads before they ever appear on Google
    • New “risk model” to detect violations: Our computer scanning depends on detailed risk models to determine whether a particular ad may violate our policies, and we recently upgraded our engineering system with a new “risk model” that is even more precise in detecting advertisers who violate our policies
    • Faster manual review process: Some ads need to be reviewed manually. To increase our response time in preventing ads from policy-violating advertisers, we sped up our internal processes and systems for manual reviews, enabling our specialists to be more precise and fast
    • Twenty-four hour response time: We aim to respond within 24 hours upon receiving a reliable complaint about an ad to ensure that we’re reviewing ads in a timely fashion

    Google says it disabled over 130 million ads last year out of the billions that were submitted. The company says it reduced bad ads by over 50% for the year, compared to 2010.

  • Will Google Hurt Your Site By Improving Itself?

    Are we getting ready to see a massive overhaul of Google or just some expansion of what we’ve already seen for years. That’s the question. Either way, it appears Google wants to keep users more on its own sites and less on other people’s sites.

    If Google can give users what they need without sending them to other sites, that makes the user experience better doesn’t it? On the other hand, it could hurt a lot of other sites and businesses in the process, depending on how certain things play out. Do you think Google should do more to keep users from having to click through to third-party websites? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    What Is Google Planning?

    The Wall Street Journal put out this huge article about changes brewing with Google (specifically, the company’s search engine) that would make you think search as you know it is about to be turned on its head. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land provides some good analysis and what he calls a “reality check”.

    The truth about it all is that much of what the WSJ article discusses has been part of Google for a while. However, that does not mean that there is not a bigger picture takeaway we should get out of that article – the direction Google is moving in, which does have large implications for sites (and therefore businesses), competition in search and social media, and advertising. It also sounds like Google is getting more aggressive in the strategy.

    Okay, so what is the strategy? Basically, it’s about providing more direct answers in search results. Much of what the article discusses sounds like what Google has been doing with Google Squared, as Danny mentions.

    Where Google’s Changes Are Coming From

    Google really started using the Squared technology to provide direct answers in search results in 2010.

    If you read the WSJ article, however, you discover (near the end) that it’s more about (or at least additionally about) Google’s acquisition of Metaweb Technologies (also in 2010). Here’s a snippet of Google’s announcement about the Metaweb acquisition from back then:

    With efforts like rich snippets and the search answers feature, we’re just beginning to apply our understanding of the web to make search better. Type [barack obama birthday] in the search box and see the answer right at the top of the page. Or search for [events in San Jose] and see a list of specific events and dates. We can offer this kind of experience because we understand facts about real people and real events out in the world. But what about [colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000] or [actors over 40 who have won at least one oscar]? These are hard questions, and we’ve acquired Metaweb because we believe working together we’ll be able to provide better answers.

    In addition to our ideas for search, we’re also excited about the possibilities for Freebase, Metaweb’s free and open database of over 12 million things, including movies, books, TV shows, celebrities, locations, companies and more. Google and Metaweb plan to maintain Freebase as a free and open database for the world. Better yet, we plan to contribute to and further develop Freebase and would be delighted if other web companies use and contribute to the data. We believe that by improving Freebase, it will be a tremendous resource to make the web richer for everyone. And to the extent the web becomes a better place, this is good for webmasters and good for users.

    According to the WSJ, that 12 million is now more like 200 million entities, and Google is also trying to get access to more organizations’ and government agencies’ databases to expand even more.

    Will Google’s Broader Strategy Hurt Your Site’s Traffic?

    The Journal calls the forthcoming changes (reportedly in the coming months) “among the biggest in the company’s history” adding that they “could affect millions of websites”. The report cites “one person briefed on Google’s plans” as saying the changes could directly impact 10% to 20% of all search queries or “tens of billions per month”.

    That’s a lot.

    Of course, anytime Google makes big changes, webmasters and SEOs have to pay attention, and often adjust their strategies. Sometimes the changes have a huge impact on the web and businesses. See Panda update.

    Interestingly, the Journal’s report says “people briefed on the matter” indicate that Google is hoping the changes will make people stay longer on its own site. Obviously, time spent on Google’s search results page is time not being spent on your site. If Google’s expansion of these direct answers is as huge as it’s being portrayed (and probably depending on the partnerships the company is able to secure), this could cover a pretty broad range of website and content types. We might have a lot more types of sites joining the growing list of “competitors” complaining about Google “favoring its own results”.

    It’s definitely worth noting, however, that the article also implies Google will be offering markup solutions for sites to use to highlight certain content elements to be displayed in the direct answer-style results. Even still, applying such markup, would presumably only help Google in keeping users on Google’s site and not going to yours. Depending on what you are hoping to achieve with your site’s traffic, this could be either critical or make no difference. A brick and mortar store would already have to deal with a similar situation, by having info displayed in Google Places. If the end goal is simply trying to get customers in the door, who cares if they’re actually going to your site? Other businesses rely on traffic to their sites.

    We’re No Longer In The Stone Age Of Search

    Given recent developments in the ever-lasting discussion and efforts related to aggregation (such as new legislation proposed in Germany), there is another interesting layer to this whole strategy. Some sites may simply have a problem with Google displaying content from their sites. Clearly, some (news organizations in particular) already don’t like that Google displays snippets of content when linking to sources. Depending on how big this direct answers strategy gets, I can see more fuss being raised in that area. At least with the traditional snippet-based result, it’s accompanied by a link that is likely to drive a referral to the content.

    This appears to be the way search is evolving though, and it’s not just Google. Bing has touted its ability to serve direct answers since it launched. That’s why it’s “the decision engine”. Then you things like Wolfram Alpha, which is heavily integrated with the ever-popular Siri. Despite its mysterious absence from the new iPad, I think we can still expect that to be more involved in the future of search. Google has its own competitor to that in the works, by the way. I wonder how much these changes will play into that.

    Competition and Advertising

    Though Google has been doing a lot of the direct answer and semantic search stuff for years, I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that since Microsoft launched Bing, Google has made some changes directly in response to what Bing has done.

    As far as competition goes, it’s not all about Microsoft and Bing though – even in search. It’s clear that Facebook and Google are major rivals these days (as companies), and as I’ve written about several times in the past, Facebook has some real opportunities to make a bigger play in search. I’m not going to rehash all of that again here, but ultimately it’s about where web users are spending their time and monetizing those web users – mostly through advertising.

    As one disgruntled engineer, who recently quit Google discussed in a widely publicized post, Google is much more about advertising and competing with Facebook these days. This is the primary reason Google needs Google+ to succeed. It can potentially tell Google a lot more about its users, the way Facebook knows so much about its users, and is able to deliver highly targeted and relevant ads, which are tremendously beneficial to advertisers, and growing in popularity among small businesses, I might add.

    The fact is that a lot of Google users aren’t thrilled with all the Google+ integration that has been happening – namely “Search Plus Your World,” which injects a personalized, largely Google+ based experience (despite the on/off toggle). We’ve seen plenty of examples of where relevancy has been sacrificed. It will be interesting to see if an expanded amount of direct answers can help counter that. Interestingly enough both strategies serve to keep users on Google properties more – whether that be reading a direct answer from a results page or clicking through to a Google+ profile. And while Google+ doesn’t have ads on it now, how long do you think that will last? After all, what people commonly think of as Google+ is really just Google’s version fo the News Feed. It’s just a feature. Google+ is a social layer across the greater Google.

    Do you think the direction Google is headed in is a good one for the web? Let us know what you think in the comments.

  • Google Flight Search Goes International

    Google Flight Search Goes International

    In September, Google launched Flight Search, the fruit of its acquisition of ITA Software. It was a standalone service, but then Google integrated it right into search results in December.

    Until now, it has been U.S. only – meaning only flights within the U.S. While the starting point still needs to be U.S., it is now including international flights. “Starting today, you can find flights, including international destinations, from the U.S. quickly and conveniently,” says product manager Eric Zimmerman in a post on Google’s Inside Search blog.

    International Flight Search

    “A quick click over each city on the map will show the different options available to you almost instantly — and click the chart next to the dates to show alternative dates so you can make the best choice for your trip,” says Zimmerman. “Likewise, if you’re looking to hop over to Europe for a weekend from New York City and are flexible with your departure and arrival airports, you can see the options for your gateway.”

    Earlier this month, Google announced it started powering an air travel reservation service for Cape Air. Competitors are surely not thrilled. As you may know, the FairSearch Coalition, which is comprised of Google competitors (mainly travel sites, but including Microsoft) was formed to see the company’s acquisition of ITA Software blocked entirely. Obviously that didn’t happen.

    Google said it has now included over 500 airports outside the U.S. in Flight Search, and is working to expand it more in the near future.

  • Will Google Rank New TLDs Better Than .com Domains?

    Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, took to Google+ to bust yet another myth (there’s been a lot of Matt Cutts myth busting lately, it seems).

    He points to an article from Adrian Kinderis, CEO of ARI Registry Services (described as “a top-level domain specialist”), which claims that the new top-level domains will “trump .com in Google search results”. Kinderis writes:

    Will a new TLD web address automatically be favoured by Google over a .com equivalent? Quite simply, yes it will. I’ve been researching this topic since development of the new TLD program first began (around 6 years ago) and have closely followed the opinions of the many search industry experts who have taken a great deal of interest in the introduction of these new domains and the impact they will have.

    The more I research, the more I have no doubt that a new TLD address will trump its .com equivalent.

    Followers of Cutts may have some doubt. Here’s what he said about it on Google+:

    Sorry, but that’s just not true, and as an engineer in the search quality team at Google, I feel the need to debunk this misconception. Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn’t bet on that happening in the long-term either. If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that’s your choice, but you shouldn’t register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you’ll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.

    In the comments on Matt’s post, one reader suggested that Google doesn’t rank good content, but ranks popular content. Matt responded to that, pointing to a post we did on a video where he discussed porn sites and PageRank.

  • Google’s Main Panda Help Thread Gets Split Up

    For over a year, people who think that their site has been unjustly affected by Google’s Panda algorithm update had a centralized place to voice their problems – and with any luck they could receive guidance from other webmasters or even Google folk. That help thread inside Google’s Webmaster Central Forums had amassed thousands of entries in its year of existence.

    But now, most of those posts are gone. The main thread has been split up and now the posts are spread about other threads. Google’s John Mueller explains what happened in the “Why is the main Panda thread not accessible” thread:

    Hi guys. It looks like the particularly long threads were split up for migration. The content is still there, you can find it in search. It’s great having your feedback, even (and especially) if it’s critical. Please continue posting, feel free to start a new thread if you’d like.

    Cheers
    John

    Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable first noticed the thread issues. He says that the main Panda thread had nearly 9,000 posts before this happened. As of right now, the main thread only has 1,001 posts.

    What’s interesting about this little shift is that Google has specifically said that having one giant Panda help thread makes it easier for them to follow it – plus they pretty much read all of the posts that appear on the thread. The same John Mueller mentioned above had this to say last October about said Panda thread:

    It’s certainly easier to follow a single thread than to follow lots of threads spread out across the web. Even if not all of the issues have the same cause, it makes it easier to track them, and pass possible issues on where appropriate. If we follow as they get posted, we don’t have to go through the previous posts. I subscribe to threads like these via email, it makes it easier to focus on the new posts, do a preliminary diagnosis and forward things where appropriate.

    He went on to say that the thread was really more like a feed than a thread. And now it has been fragmented.

    At the end of February, Google announced some changes to Panda, saying that they “improved how Panda interacts with indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines.”

  • Matt Cutts Gives A Google Algorithm History Lesson

    Most webmasters these days are probably more concerned with more recent Google algorithm updates. While you certainly want to acknowledge the things Google has had in place for years, Google puts out big lists of changes on a monthly basis, and if you want to stay on the cutting edge of what the search giant is up to, it’s good to follow these lists.

    That said, it’s also interesting to jump in the time machine and look back at how Google has handled changes in the past. This video doesn’t have any real SEO value to webmasters of today, as far as I can tell, in terms of providing fresh ideas for how to rank better in Google in 2012, but again, it’s interesting if you want to learn more about the inner workings of Google.

    Matt Cutts has posted one of his Webmaster Help videos, but this time addresses a question about Google’s history (submitted by a user):

    According to “In the Plex,” the last Google Dance and everflux switch came with update “Bart” but, in an earlier post you said it was “Fritz”. Did the last Google Dance and switch to everflux come with update Bart or Fritz?

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    Today’s webmaster video covers ancient history: Google dances, BART, and Update Fritz: http://t.co/gyjV01Of 3 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    “It’s critical that we nail down all these last little bits of ancient search engine history,” says Cutts.

    “Bart was the internal code name. It was actually, if I remember correctly, named after a particular salesperson, who was especially fresh, so if somebody comes to a Halloween party dressed as Barry Bondage, that’s pretty fresh, right?” he says. “So…named after a salesperson internally, Bart. It was known as Fritz externally, because whenever the Google Dance would happen, it would happen about once a month, and basically you’d have several data centers, and each night we would take one data center out of the rotation, and we would put new data on it.”

    “So for about a week, we were swapping now old data versus new data, and so for that week, you’d have the Google Dance, because you’d hit either old data centers or new data centers,” he continues. “So once a month, people would look for the Google Dance to happen. They would name them alphabetically like hurricanes. You start with A early in the year and then B the month after that, and so summer, which was F, you’d have gotten to Fritz. So they called it Update Fritz.”

    “And I remember, Fritz lasted all the way through the summer of, I believe, 2003, because it was really Everflux,” Cutts says. “That is, it was changing to an incremental update system. So rather than a batch system that would update once per month, it was, OK, we’ll update a certain percentage of our index every night, and so the index was always changing. So internally, that system to have very fresh results was called Bart. Externally, people called it Update Fritz. So I hope that explains the difference between those two names.”

    The story does illustrate that internal and external names can sometimes cause confusion. Google, in its monthly lists these days, always shares its internal names alongside the changes. This will likely help keep the names straight as points of reference for commentators as time goes on.

  • Pagination: Google Goes More In Depth On SEO And The Markup

    Back in September, Google introduced new markup for paginated content in an effort to return single-page versions of content in search results, when the content is broken up among multiple page. This would include things like multiple-page articles and slideshows.

    The markup is rel=”next” and rel=”prev”.

    Google says users usually prefer the single page format, and as a consumer of content, you probably agree in most cases. But tt’s worth noting that the markup isn’t an absolute must. Even Google acknowledges that there are times when paginated content makes sense. Sometimes single-page versions can load slowly, for example.

    Google Developer Programs Tech Lead Maile Ohye says, “Remember that if you have paginated content, it’s fine to leave it as-is and not add rel=”next” and rel=”prev” markup at all.”

    She created a video going more in depth on using the markup.

    She has actually put together a 37-page slideshow on the subject as well:

    Keep in mind, if you’re in e-commerce, this all applies to you too. It’s not just about writing articles and creating slidehsows. It could very well include product categories that span multiple pages.

    Google does say that using the markup provides “a strong hint” that pages should be treated as a “logical sequence”.

    By the way, notice that in the video, we have another Googler using a Mac.

  • Google Search Quality Meeting Uncut [Video]

    Google tweeted out a link to a video of some footage from one of its search quality meetings. The company says this is part of its efforts to be more transparent how how its search engine works.

    @google
    A Googler    Watch uncut video from one of our search quality meetings (for the first time ever!) http://t.co/y53oAAx0 30 minutes ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    This particular video deals with spelling for long queries. The meeting, held in Mountain View, is where the search team decides to launch specific algorithm changes.

    Google says in the YouTube description:

    “As part of our continued effort to be more transparent about how search works, we’re publishing video footage from our internal weekly search meeting: ‘Quality Launch Review.’ We hold the meeting almost every Thursday to discuss possible algorithmic improvements and make decisions about what to launch. This video is from the meeting that happened on December 1st, 2011, and includes the entire uncut discussion of a real algorithmic improvement to our spell correction system.”

    Google has been talking about these transparency efforts for months, and recently started a monthly series of blog posts outlining various algorithmic changes they’ve made. From the sound of it, we can expect more of these videos as well, which should give us an even deeper look at Google’s strategies and mindset.

    If your’e a webmaster looking to get the most out of your SEO efforts, I’d suggest keeping an eye out for those monthly posts, these videos and the Webmaster Help videos Google’s Matt Cutts puts out. In fact, add Duane Forrester’s videos and Bing’s search quality series to the list as well.

  • Google May Have Dropped Another Twitter Feature

    The relationship between Google and Twitter has been somewhat rocky lately. Last year, the two companies were unable to reach an agreement that would continue to give Google access to the Twitter firehose to better its search results. For that reason, Google’s realtime search feature disappeared.

    When Google launched “Search Plus Your World,” integrating Google+ content more heavily into its search results, Twitter raised a big stink about how it was bad for the Internet, and noting that Google should be showing Twitter results for some queries where it was favoring Google+ results.

    Google’s response was:

    “We are a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.”

    But Google does still show Twitter results, and it is in cases where Google has every right to show them, but doesn’t, that Twitter appears to have the biggest problem.

    The tensions even led to the cancellation of a meeting between the two companies that may have otherwise resulted in a better Twitter experience on Android devices.

    But that’s all old news at this point. There was an interesting post in WebmasterWorld about another subtle disconnect between Google and Twitter, which could be related to the deterioration of the relationship between the two companies, or could just be a coincidence. It’s interesting nonetheless.

    WebmasterWorld member Sgt Kickaxe posted in the forum:

    Im not sure if anyone’s noticed or written about this yet but the Twitter option in feedburner [webmasterworld.com] has gone awol. In fact the entire “socialize” option link now appears missing.

    The service is still active (for now), you can manually navigate to the socialize page by typing the address in your navigation bar. old address: feedburner.google.com/fb/a/socialize?id=YOURIDHERE

    What I liked about the service was that it automatically used Google’s shortening service for links which comes with analytics. At this point the service is still active though unreachable if you don’t know the address so it may be taken offline, eventually, or perhaps it will just stop accepting NEW connections but will not change existing connections, or?

    Perhaps Google simply decided to stop promoting twitter altogether after their fallout over tweet indexing. Who knows.

    My guess is that this is not directly related to the company politics between Google and Twitter. If that were the case, I’d expect other Twitter features to be missing from Google products as well – like the share on Twitter option from Google Reader or YouTube. Removal of things like this would hurt the user experience.