How does Google search the whole web in half a second

 

Matt Cutts gives a quick 7 minute overview of the entire indexing to search results process.

The 'Reasonable Surfer' patent

Google's recent patent, dubbed the 'Reasonable Surfer' is making the SEO community re-evaluate the way internal and external linking is carried out on a site.

For more information see SEO by the Sea and SearchEngineLand

Google hide keyword data for search but not Adwords

If a user is logged in to their Google account, performs a search and then clicks on your website in the organic search listings, the keyword or phrase they used will no longer show up in Google Analytics.  But if a user clicks on an advert, the keyword/phrase is still being passed to Adwords.

Logged-in searches will now use the https protocol which makes search for secure but is going to make it difficult for website owners to distinguish between the different types of visitors to their sites, for example they will no longer be able to tell which users searched for their brand name and which found their site looking for a category of product or piece of information.

Read more on the Google Analytics Blog here

Google buys restaurant, hotel and shopping review site Zagat

Zagat Guides, orignally a publisher of printed pocket restaurant and hotel guides for over 100 cities worldwide, has been bought by Google.  The quality of the reviews and ratings on Zagat means Google will no longer have to scrape reviews from other sites such as Yelp. 

When the data is integrated into Google Local search, Google will be able to provide the best restaurant, hotel and shopping recommendations and reviews in the industry.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of Google Maps and Location services, praises Zagat on the Official Google Blog. "Zagat provides people with a democratized, authentic and comprehensive view of where to eat, drink, stay, shop and play worldwide based on millions of reviews and ratings.

"For all of these reasons, I'm incredibly excited to collaborate with Zagat to bring the power of Google search and Google Maps to their products and users, and to bring their innovation, trusted reputation and wealth of experience to our users."

Google +1

Google are trialling their version of a Digg or a Facebook 'like'   +1 is Google's attempt to break into the social bookmarking sector.  In the trial, each website in the search results has a +1 button next to it and each time a user searches for a particular product, the results will indicate not only sites that the user has +1'd themselves but also sites which have been +1'd by friends in their (Google) social network, i.e. contacts from Gmail, Google Talk and Buzz.
 



The increase in popularity of social media has forced Google to use some of its metrics such as diggs, likes, tweets and retweets in their search algorithms.  The use of these metrics allows Google to deliver search results for events as they happen, something they have been criticised for in the past, particularly after Michael Jackson's death when Twitter became the only site for users to turn to for the laterst information online.

Google now has all the pieces needed for a social network (Google profiles, Gmail, Buzz, Google Talk, +1, Android and an app store) but still nothing to link them all together.

Google have stated that +1 will not be used as part of the search algorithm at launch but it is something they will be starting to look at.

We’ll also start to look at +1’s as one of the many signals we use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, including social signals from other services. For +1's, as with any new ranking signal, we'll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality over time.

See the Webmaster Central Blog for more information
Opt in to +1 here
You will be able to add a +1 button to your site here 

Microsoft and Yahoo to join forces in deal to challenge Google dominance

The internet search engine rivals Microsoft and Yahoo! have this morning announced a collaborative deal to challenge the dominance of search engine giant Google.

After the collapse of a bold $47 Billion attempt by Microsoft to take over Yahoo! last year failed many industry commentators had expected the relationship between the two rivals to become hostile after Yahoo! rejected Microsoft’s mega deal offer. However last year’s fall-out appears to have been put to one side as the two technology giants reached agreement with a clear distinction of duties which plays to each of their strengths. An attempt by Google to strike a deal with Yahoo! also failed last November, when in the face of stiff opposition by the US Department of Justice, Google withdrew from negotiations.

Early indications suggest that under the new deal, Microsoft will provide search technology to power Yahoo!’s web sites. Interestingly this comes just months after Microsoft unveiled its new ‘Bing’ platform which has received widespread acclaim from industry pundits who have time and again given short shrift to the many previous attempts Microsoft have made to play catch-up with the market leading Google. As Bing continues to tweak its technology and make improvements to its algorithm many believe that it will eventual be able to establish itself as a serious rival to Google.

New management within Yahoo!, headed up by Carol bantz their new Chief Executive are said to have championed the deal which sees the company benefiting from 88% of the ad revenue generated from the ten year agreement.

This deal sees the duo commanding up to 28% of the American market and slightly less in the UK. Annual revenues are said to be worth circa $12 Billion in the US alone, of which Google dominates a massive two thirds of the market.

Online marketers are likely to be cheered by the alliance which will provide a more credible platform with bigger market share, thus slightly eroding the powerhouse Google’s monopoly as the world’s largest advertising vendor. In the past marketers have overlooked both Yahoo! and Microsoft because the pairs’ market share was considered too small to bother with. Now, effectively three times the size, advertisers will be lining up to negotiate with the enlarged player.

"This deal will make for an interesting new element of competition in the paid search space as advertisers recognise that a sizeable chunk of the search market is now controlled by a third party", commented Fuse Optimisation Ltd’s, Head of Search, Mike Page.

A new world of SEO just hours away?

Hundreds of news sources and the worldwide blogosphere is currently alive with speculation about Microsoft's drive to launch a new search initiative that will try to be a Google killer and potentially change the world of search engine optimisation (SEO).

Will it do the job? we're not holding our breath here at Fuse Optimisation. Many commentators seem to think not. What seems to be expected is a weak copy of Google, partly blamed on a penny-pinching approach by Microsoft which, over time, becomes a 'hope it will work out' philosophy. Contrast that with the apparent dynamism and innovativeness people associate more with Google, and therein lies the rub.

Still, we (you, me and the various SEO consultancy firms) won't know much more until the new search project - apparently now codenamed Bing - is launched in the next few hours... Let's wait and see.

SEO gets more Google gadgets from Searchology 2009

If the SEO team at Fuse were to sum up the changes Google has introduced from the latest Google Searchology event this week, we think "more powerful searching" is a good summary.

By providing access to a range of ways that enhance the search experience and help searchers find the most relevant information, Google continues to work towards 'the perfect online resource'.

Key news from the event includes Google adding 'Search Options' to generate different views with various filtering options to help find better results more quickly. Then there's 'Google Squared', a new tool that retrieves and organises facts instead of just listing relevant web pages.

If you're interested to understand some more about the Searchology event, take a look at search guru Rand Fishkin's helpful online guide  and this Google search options review.

Here at Fuse we have always been excited to be part of the ethical search engine optimisation movement, one that works hard for clients to help them build great positions in the search engine rankings. It's kind of warming to be part of the Google and search community's drive to help achieve the best search results for searchers.

Google to make algorithm change

According to WebProNews Google is about to make an algorithm change to stop malicious sites appearing in the Google results. (See our earlier post from April for more details on last month's attacks.)

This is good news for search engine optimisation companies who should see most of their client's websites rise in the rankings by a place or two.

SEO + site maps - study by Googlers

Get hold of a Google site map study, a 10-page PDF covering all you need to know for search engine optimisation (SEO). You can read a summary of the site map study report on search engine land blog.

It covers recent years of sitemaps useage at Google, working out how sitemap files can improve Google web index freshness and coverage (how Google crawls the web deeper to discover more content than if there was no sitemap).

Scareware attacks highlight the latest changes in the Google algorithm

PandaLabs recently highlighted a sophisticated attack by spammers who targeted hundreds of keyword phrases relating to Ford cars using over a million links from trusted sites. Their aim is to flood the Google rankings with malicious sites so users searching for a phrase such as “Ford Uk” are presented with a list of sites which look authentic except for telltale URLs which consist of random numbers and letters and a “.pl” Polish domain.

When a user clicks on one of the results, malicious software is installed and the user is prompted to pay money to buy ‘security’ software to remove it.

The whole episode illustrates how Google has changed their algorithm from the ‘Florida Update’ era, where a sudden influx of incoming links raised a red flag. With the advent of social networking, social bookmarking and sites built around user-generated content, Google now needs to trust these sudden bursts of new links, but it isn’t always good at spotting where the algorithm is being fooled by spammers manipulating these trusted sites.

For search engine optimisation companies, this highlights the importance not only of links from user-generated content sites, but more specifically that sudden increases in link volumes from trusted sites with ‘fresh’ content no longer incurs the wrath of Google and now does the exact opposite. Even for blackhat SEO’ers and spammers.

The secrets of Google news exposed

A recent post on the Google news blog has finally laid to rest a number of SEO myths about how to rank well in Google's news search.

Google confirmed that:

• Updating a news item once it has been published can create problems.
• Articles which contain only images or video won't be included.
• Redesigning your site may affect coverage in Google News.

Common myths include:

• Timing the publication of the article improves ranking.
• Having adsense on your site impoves rankings.
• Having an image next to your article impoves rankings.