Archive for the ‘Search-Engine-Optimization’ Category

Who Did The Latest Google Panda Update Bite This Time?

Monday, October 10th, 2011

The latest round of Google Panda updates - algorithm updates that affect the universal search engine rankings - have bitten again. This latest update, dubbed “2.5″, has resulted in a new tumultuous list of winners and losers.

The losers? Press release distribution sites, e.g. PRNewswire and BusinessWire. The winners? Google sites, including YouTube and Android.com.

Unfortunately, it’s a little hard to figure out the rhyme and reason to the winners and losers list, without understanding specific company practices. Industry thought leaders claim that authorship markup should be your next step if you are struggling to avoid Panda bites, as Google seems to be ever more concerned with original authorship of content. And dare I take a leap when looking at the winners list and say that Google is valuing video more and more?

Google Panda Strikes Again?

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Panda was a clever name choice for the Google Panda updates, which are algorithm updates that affect the universal search engine rankings.

But perhaps Snake would be a better name? Because it looks like a new iteration of Panda has struck again, and created side-wide ranking demotions across the Web. Individual reports have actually claimed a ranking decrease on sites with local relevance, and an increase on niche-info sites. This is interesting, because it seems like the exact opposite of what Panda was initially created to fight against?

Perhaps this isn’t a Panda bite, but a Panda revision of a previous overreach?

Bing Adaptive Search Introduces Search Personalization

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

Google has received some flack for their behind-the-scenes search personalization, utilizing predictive analysis to anticipate the results you’d be most interested in, before you see them.

But that hasn’t stopped Bing from launching Adaptive Search, Microsoft’s attempt at roughly the same thing. And their release of this new feature slightly downplays the release, viewing it “less as a ‘feature’ and more of what to expect from search”.

That’s how many people see it. An obvious step in the evolution of predictive search technology. Bing provides the example of an obvious film fanatic, based on prior searches, searching for ‘Australia’, you’re probably searching for the film, rather than the country. Now, these filters won’t trap users in a filter bubble, taking a huge assumption and radically altering your search results based on the prediction.

These are simple tweaks aimed at helping you find what you’re really looking for a little bit faster.

Two New Search Engine Market Trends

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

The Bing-Yahoo alliance continues to grow, with a 3% month-over-month increase. This while Google, the overwhelming search market leader, lost 1% month-over-month. These have really become the only 2 players (if we consider Bing and Yahoo to be a single player, which we should), with the next 64 search engines making up the remaining 6% of U.S. searches combined.

Secondly, it looks like longer search queries are becoming more and popular, with 5-8 word queries increasing by 3% month-over-month. In the past, users had to simplify their queries to find the information they need. As search engines become more and more sophisticated though, we can be as specific as we want and still find an answer.

It’s an exciting time – and getting better.

Twitter Renews Bing Partnership. Not Google’s.

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Twitter has renewed their search partnership with Bing, and sort of publicly teased Google about it via Twitter. In a tweet that referenced “Search w/o Twitter = old news”, Twitter makes fun of the fact that Google’s search engine no longer carries Twitter feeds, which are turning into the industry’s most real-time news outlet out there.

It’s a big differentiation for Microsoft, specifically in terms of news searches. And they seem quite happy to brag about it.

Of course, Twitter probably can’t be thrilled about Google’s new attempt at social with Google+ and probably had a little bit of fun with these Twitter teases.

Google Optimizes Search Results for Football Season

Monday, September 5th, 2011

Ever been stuck on the road somewhere trying to find your team’s score during the big game? It can be awful. Even if you make it to your official NFL team’s website, it can be hard to find the live game score.

So, some of us have resorted to ESPN or Football-specific apps that provide real-time scoring. But these mobile apps can take up a huge amount of your smartphone’s internal memory. And Google has found a solution around it.

Google has partnered with ESPN so that your team-related Google search results instantly provide real-time scoring, schedules and standings. It’s a football fan’s dream come true.

Blogger Looks to Win Back WordPress Users

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Does anyone else find it weird that by and large, the Internet marketing community has chosen WordPress as the blog editor of choice, over Blogger, which is owned by Google, the very search engine all of these Internet marketers are using WordPress to rank highly for?

It’s really weird. And perhaps that’s why Google has just launched a complete Blogger redesign. The design is extremely intuitive, making post creation much simpler. And Blogger’s new “overview” section lets you see exactly how people are reacting to your blog posts.

Will it win back any ex-patriots? I think that depends on the plug-ins that come out for it, which are really what has made WordPress so popular. But the graphics are great. The simplicity is great. It’s just too bad it took this long to get here.

List Snippets Replace Meta Description in Google Search Results

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Meta descriptions in Google search results help give searchers a sense for what’s going to be on the page. Programmers can customize this meta description on every page. Sometimes, Google creates their own for your page, based on the keyword which populates your site on their search results. But now, for sites that are list pages, List Snippets will now replace this meta description information.

If the search result contains a structured list, for instance a table or a large series of bullets, Google will select three relevant rows or items and include that information within a bulleted format on the search results page itself. Google has been experimenting with this content area in other ways recently. Their announcement of rich snippets for music allows Webmasters to display the song info within this meta description space.

Inside How Google Tweaks Their Search Algorithms

Friday, August 26th, 2011

This is a fabulous video of how Google makes their search algorithm decisions. It’s a lot less scary than the dictatorial decision making I assumed took place, and it’s a whole lot more thoughtful.

Google makes more than 500 algorithm changes a year. Their engineering team has an idea, or spots a weakness, and through user testing and focus groups, they decide, very strategically whether the change would be a huge net gain to Google users search engine experience.

I like that Google is showing us this side of them. If they can become the “transparent” giant behemoth of tech companies, that might be a huge win in the customer trust department – especially to combat all the privacy concerns many are facing nowadays.

SEO Benefits of Video

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Video utilization has been a Web best practice for a while now. It engages. People like video. Hey, beats reading, right?

But if you’re using video as a content replacement – a text replacement – how can you take advantage of the SEO benefits of video?

First, you need to understand that when you’re dealing with video, you’re dealing with two search engines, specifically the biggest two search engines in the world – Google and YouTube. Google will display videos directly within their standard search engine results in certain cases – so when you embed a video on a specific page of your site, make sure that video is optimized similarly to the page as well. That video may actually have a better chance of making the first page of Google than the content page itself.

YouTube makes it easy to optimize your video, including inserting a keyword-rich title, description, tags and even annotations.