In the beginning of last month (April) Google announced the release of a large scale update to its search algorithm which took place in late February. This particular update, which is referred to in the webmaster community as “Panda 3.3”, has been considered an extension of previous updates which have taken place over the last year ("Panda" through "Panda 3.3") but are unlike those which are related to content, identifying the originators of content, and brands - what Google … [Read more...]
Google Market Share Strong Despite Growing Legal Problems, Competition
Google's Street View project is currently being investigated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While Street Views are designed to provide panoramic views and wireless mapping of areas, there are allegations that the process “went beyond mapping wireless connections” and private information and communications have been intercepted and collected during the process. According to FCC documents, Google's data gathering efforts have allowed people’s communications, … [Read more...]
One Year Into Google Panda; And It Still Isn’t Over Yet
The one-year anniversary of the original Google Panda update has come and gone and we’re still seeing significant tweaks in the aftermath . Google Panda was aimed at filtering out and eliminated junk content sites and/or sites heavily supported from ads by penalizing them for having poor content. While Google can’t physically remove data from a website, they sure can effectively prevent the masses from finding them by rating them lower than those with content perceived to be … [Read more...]
A Close Look at Quality Launch Reviews at Google Inc. (Video)
Each week (on Thursdays), Google engineers meet to go over anticipated changes and improvements intended to be rolled out onto Google.com. It is interesting to see how much detail goes into each of these decisions. Whether or not a new component will be added to Google search, is decided in these meetings, this one on misspellings and rolling out a change to Suggested Search. Google recently released a list of 50 changes on its blog “Inside Search” which stated: “We’re … [Read more...]
What’s Google Doing Now? The “New” Google Algorithm
The last couple of years have paved the way for many changes in the field and study of search engine optimization and online marketing. Social media awareness grew significantly in 2011 with many reports being released as to how companies may address new social challenges in the upcoming year. Domain names also took some heat in late December of 2010 as Google publically released information on the fact that they would reduce the benefit to ranking sites in their search … [Read more...]
Google’s Move To Encrypt Search Referrals
Everyone on the planet should boycott Google Analytics, but Google knows no one will. Google Analytics isn’t about delivering a great free stats program to users. It’s about using Webmasters for learning about their traffic and Google’s competitors. Google built an exceptional tool for Webmasters who are willing to share all their web sites information with Google in order to use the “free” Analytics system, including users time on site, user locations, referring sites, … [Read more...]
Google’s +1 Feature Poised To Take Over Internet
Google released its Google+ network just a month ago and it is already estimated to have twenty million users. Those who better understand the significance of Google +1 see the writing on the wall, and those who don't will soon follow suit. Here is a few reasons why I predict +1 will continue to grow - and grow quickly. 1 - When people click +1, their connections will find those pages easier. Not everyone realizes it yet, but once people hit the +1 button either on … [Read more...]
Simply Put: Why Google Both Makes and Breaks Online Business
This image (below post) is a visualization of how and why Google.com typically makes and breaks all online businesses. Although this does change a bit from time to time, for the most part, this is generally what you'll see accross the board when looking at web stats for various web sites. Having a great site, a good idea, or a unique service isn't enough to make it with your Internet business. You need visibility on Google to matter, period. Sites that do well on Google … [Read more...]
How Google’s Panda Has Changed The Landscape of Search
A significant part of Panda is about cleaning up the web and finding out what's real and what's not. Users are getting tired of sifting through garbage in the results and search engines are getting tired of serving it. As search itself becomes more and more competitive, users have increased choices, advertisers and eyeballs become more valuable, and it becomes a search engines key focus and responsibility to deliver the best quality results, in every search, with little to no … [Read more...]
Google To Devalue Exact Match Domains: Is Google Going Too Far?
Barry Schwartz recently posted what he called his "Key Takeaways From Google’s Matt Cutts Talk At PubCon" One of these points stated that Matt Cutts specifically mentioned "Google will be looking at why exact domain matches rank so well. For example, if you have a site at www.blue-widgets.com it may rank a bit too well for the keyword phrase [blue widgets]". This is unwise in my opinion - just get better at fighting spam...... I wonder if it's just some webmaster … [Read more...]