Google

Google has been testing some algorithm updates recently and last week has decided to put them into effect. The Google Page Layout Update, as it is now known, takes into account the content that is "above the fold" on a webpage and will reduce the quality and authority of pages that do not provide quality content above the fold (namely excessive ads at the top of the page).

Google's "Distinguished Engineer", Matt Cutts wrote:

We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.

Well, check out the video below and see for yourself....

I guess the short answer is, as long as you follow Google's guidelines than SEO is not considered spam.

It is going to be up to each individual website and their SEO team to determine the right blend of onsite optimization, content creation and link building that will work for them, without upsetting the mighty "G".

Interesting how, in the video above, Matt Cutts is once again pushing site speed as a ranking factor. "One of many ranking factors" as is always stated. I just find it funny how that particular ranking factor (site speed) always seems to be mentioned....

Google announced the availability of real time data tracking through Google Analytics last week. Google Analytics Real-Time provides a set of reports that show what’s happening on your website as it happens.

According to the Google Analytics blog, the new Real-Time reports can be used for some of the following analysis:

Google Analytics (our favorite website stats program) has a cool feature that you can opt-in to for sharing data. Google Analytics (or GA as we like to so frequently use acronyms) anonymously captures stats from your website and runs analysis to get an overall feel (or pulse) for the web. The folks at Google do claim statistical significance with literally hundreds of thousands of websites participating (we probably have several hundred from our small web studio alone).

They presented quite a bit of information in their recent newsletter but I thought the section on the Operating Systems was quite interesting:

Operating Systems

Browsers and Operation Systems (OS) are identified by the "referrer" string sent by users' browsers.

Google is getting into the social game again. Why should Mario (and Facebook) have all the fun. Hopefully the big G will play it right this time it won't be a sleeper like Google Buzz. 

Google's social strategy seems to be looking much more like Facebook's social strategy. Facebook launched its Open Graph and social plugins (including the Like Button) around this same time last year. They made a big impact in the social and SEO world with the potential for a major game changer. Google seems to be following and trying to duplicate what Facebook has started. 

The video below explains the new concept of Google +1. It's about putting a little +1 button in search results, paid ads and basically all over the web. 

What happens when your website gets caught up in a new Google algorithm update and all of the sudden your coveted top Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERP's) disappear?

Apparently you complain as loud as you can to any and all media sources. (since complaining to Google apparently falls on deaf ears) And then you build lots of traffic and links from those sources to replace your lost search engine traffic.

I just finished reading my second article today (this time on wired.com) about how Cult of Mac has been inadvertently punished by the recent Google algorithm update. 

If Adwords has not worked for you, don't fret, you are not alone. Apparently not even Google can promote enough business through Adwords to salvage certain projects.

Google announced today that they will no longer be supporting real estate listings on their Google maps. Google states the reasons for this are:

In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings), we’ve decided to discontinue the real estate feature within Google Maps on February 10, 2011.

They are excited about the way their services have been used but feel that the industry overall can be better served with a different feature set.

It is official, Google has confirmed what was suspected for sometime now; Links from social networks like Facebook and Twitter do act as one of the many signals used in ranking pages within their search engine.

A recent video over at Google Webmaster Central Channel shows Matt Cutts from Google explaining the reason for using these social signals and why it is import to the relevance of a webpage.

A post over at Search Engine Land explains how the new authoritative tools that can rank a twitter profile, for example can be used to create a value of a link from one twitter account vs. a link from another. This means that social links will most likely play a larger role in the future of SEO

Google AdWords sent out emails to select agency customers explaining that a change will be happening to their AdWords service and support. The email detailed an “Enhanced Agency Service Model” which will be happening, effective January 1, 2010.

Google will restructuring their AdWords support for agencies. Some agencies will be losing their dedicated representatives. And for those not losing their dedicated reps, the communication with the managers will be changing.

We have read that possible scenarios may be; An agency may have a dedicated agency lead and specific accounts within those organizations will have dedicated account management teams, who will be able to offer specific industry expertise. Another set of agencies will not have an assigned agency team per se, but will still be able to receive support via phone.

Sounds to me like additional scaling based on budget. Seeing how hard it is already to come by any real form of support from AdWords already (unless you have the budgets to justify it), this may just be another measure to save $$$.

We had heard rumors that agency support may be farmed out to India. However Google did not specify where this support will come from. Maybe the first level support will come from India and additional levels would be from US offices?

With Google's announcement today that they are implementing Instant Search on their desktop search, we have to wonder how this new feature will effect all of our hard earned SEO efforts.

Google Instant Search now shows results as you type your search query. It is a great new feature and should save all of us searches lots of time.
350 Million (with an M) hours of our users time to be exact. However in the same panel discussion the panelist were mentioning how user behavior will most likely change over time. For instance, users may be more likely to explore more options around their search term, since they will see more results as they are typing. This may actually lead to more time spent in Google (exploring vs. searching maybe?). Which of course means more eyeballs on the ads that Google is serving.

So while they have confirmed that this latest fantastic new feature does not effect search engine ranking results and will not change the way that the algorithm works, it does have the the potential to change user behavior and thus may present some new opportunities for SEO.