google

On 8th June, Google announced the completion of its new web indexing system, Caffeine. Google created Caffeine to ensure that its search results would offer users the most up-to-date content for any given search term. What this means for your business is that the rewards for regularly adding fresh content to your website are now greater than ever before.  

Google Caffeine is Google’s new web indexing system. It is designed to enable users to find the most recent available information relating to their search term. Google says that compared to Google’s previous index, Caffeine produces search results that are 50% fresher.

Google Caffeine matters to your business because it affects the search results that Google provides. If a site has shown signs of recent activity, then Google will treat that site as more interesting than another site where there has been no recent activity. Google is therefore likely to award a higher rank in its search results to a company that has recently added content to its website than to a rival company whose website has remained unchanged for the past two years. And the higher you rank in the search results, the easier it is for a potential customer to find you.  

When people search the web on Google, they are not searching the web itself, but only the index of the web Google has created. Before Caffeine, Google used to update the main layer of its index every two weeks. The advantage of Caffeine as an indexing system is that it is updated continuously. Caffeine is a change ‘under the bonnet’ and won’t make the process of performing a search feel different to the user. But by removing the time-lag, Google can give pages where there has been recent activity higher scores, thereby helping users to find them. 

To stay ahead of your competition you need to keep on adding good quality content to your site – so keep those press releases, blog posts and new content rolling.

At the beginning of May, Google made a change to its search algorithm. The “Mayday” update concerns search results from long tail keywords – search terms 3 or 4 words long – and has led some sites to experience a 50% drop in traffic.

At the beginning of May, Google introduced a change to its search algorithm that some organisations found disturbing. Google modified the criteria it uses for selecting search results from enquiries using long tail keywords (search terms 3 or 4 words long). Although people do not use long tail keywords very often, they can still represent an important share of the overall traffic to your site. Because the change occurred around 1st May, it has become known as Mayday. 

Following the Mayday update, some sites were reporting falls in traffic of anything between 5% and 50%. Meanwhile, other sites were experiencing an increase. The reason was that Google had changed the search algorithm for long tail keywords to reward quality over relevance. For inquiries using long tail keywords, higher quality sites will receive the traffic rather than pages that are simply relevant.

Google’s Matt Cutts has explained that the algorithmic change is not just a blip. Instead, it is a carefully considered change to how Google assesses which sites are the best match for long tail queries, and “it’s not temporary”. Google’s mind is made up. What matters now is how best to adapt. The key thing to consider, says Matt Cutts, is “what sort of thing can I do in terms of adding great content, making sure people consider me an authority.” The Mayday update created panic in some quarters, but it also reminds you of the importance of maintaining a high quality website.

You can watch Matt Cutts’ explain the change:

Google has recently announced a way of making searches more personal. What impact is this going to have on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

When you perform a search on your computer, the search engine results pages (SERPs) that Google gives you are “organic”. In other words, the terms that appear highest on the list are the ones that Google judges to be of greatest interest for everyone in general.

In the SERPs, Google is determined to preserve the impartiality of its rankings. Yet in other situations, Google will try to provide you with what it thinks is going to be of most interest to you personally.

The latest innovation announced by Google will allow you to personalise your web search with stars. If you bookmark a page using the bookmark or star icon, then the next time you perform the search, the item will appear at the top of your results.

Here's where you find the bookmark/star icons:

This is what the results would look like (using Google’s own example):
 

What impact might this have on SEO? The point of SEO is to get your company to the top of the page for a term that is relevant to your business. Will stars affect how Google perceives your site? Google has promised that the star search will leave Google’s organic search results unchanged. However, the stars will occupy the top position of search results on the page. 

Businesses already ask their website visitors to “Bookmark this page” or “Add to favourites”. I suggest you make sure that you include Google Bookmarks in the options of bookmarks for your site.

You can see Google’s article here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/stars-make-search-more-personal.html