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Yet Another Google Update

For those of you who haven't noticed - there's an update going on over at Google. It's lasted about a week and I first reported it back on Tuesday.

What appears to be happening is that they're trying to react to some aspect of backlinks but unfortunately the house of cards is teetering and cr@p results are climbing to the top for many search queries. I liken it to pulling a loose thread on a sweater only to find that that threat was holding together the entire cuff.

Basically - it appears that a small adjustment in the algorithm has created undesired affects elsewhere. Let's use an example of how this happens though admittedly - I don't know or even have a good guess yet on what they changed in this case - this is JUST AN EXAMPLE. I am NOT suggesting that this is the change or even the logic behind the change, In fact, I can guarantee it's not.

OK - now that that's out of the way - let's say for example that Google wanted to decrease the value of reciprocal links and in doing so setup an internal filter that checked for links to domains and from domains and where there was a positive match that the domains each linked to the other - that in such a case the value of those links would be zeroed out. This seems like a logical way to negate recip links HOWEVER if a Harvard professor find a thesis document posted on the MIT website valuable and links to it and an MIT student in their blog finds a research paper on the Harvard site to be relevant to their subject - should these links be negated and if we devalue both the Harvard and MIT websites - will the results for queries relevant to these studies be better?

This is just an example but a clear one as to how efferts to address one area can have undesired affects in others and of course - at this stage in their evolution they've got far more subtle aspects to their algorithm and so very many of them that a tweek in one area can have totally unpredictable affects on other areas.

At the end of the day however the results are worse than they were previously and thus, a change will come. I will put myself out there and predict further updates this evening or tomorrow (Friday) that will likely last through the weekend as Google works to address whatever issue they were originally working on but reducing and/or eliminating the undesired results in the form of lackluster sites improving in the rankings.

I will be monitoring and blogging about this update as it unfolds.

I should also note that I don't get an email from Matt Cutts letting me know when these updates happen (no really - it's true). My guesstimates are based on past patterns and thus - I may be off by a bit but Google tends to follow a similar pattern about 70 to 80 percent of the time.

Enjoy the ride and have a great long weekend !!!

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Google is Shrinking?

It appears Google is getting smaller in size"the logo, that is.

Philipp Lenssen spotted YAGT (Yet Another Google Test), this time it appears to involve a slightly smaller logo:

Have you seen this? Im a little skeptic about its authenticity. Notice how the "Results 1- 10 of." text is closer to the left in the second screengrab? Same with the login info. That often happens when you reduce your browser window size or screen resolution. That might account for the small looking logo"then again, it could be that Google will show a smaller logo only to those that have smaller screen resolutions.

Who knows? I just wanted to write a post title that included the words "Google" and "shrinking" " when does that ever happen?

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Tips From Google to Speed Up the Web

Google have recently launched a new site dedicated to helping website developers optimize their websites performance and ultimately make the web faster.

Called Google Speed the site contains tutorials, tips and performance tools directly from the Google staff. They have kindly passed on what they have learnt throughout their web performance work and experimentation.

Googlers Urs Hoelzle and Bill Coughran explain more:

We are excited to discuss what weve learned about web performance with the Internet community. However, to optimize the speed of web applications and make browsing the web as fast as turning the pages of a magazine, we need to work together as a community.

Check out the video provided by Googles Engineer Team which introduces us to the idea behind Google Speed.

Some of the tools featured on the site include:

Googles own Firefox/Firebug add-on called Page Speed
AOLs tool for measuring and analyzing web page performance called Page Test
Yahoos Firefox add-on, YSlow, which analyzes web pages and suggest ways to improve performance

There are also some fairly in-depth tutorials for web developers which include topics such as GZIP compression, HTTP caching, web graphics optimization, PHP performance tips, and more.

Google want us all to work together to make the web faster, so if you have ideas then I would suggest sharing them on Google Speed.

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Matt Cuts Talks About Over Optimization

You will find Matt Cutts of Google producing videos and answering questions from the SEO community daily. Most of these videos provide useful information for all the levels of SEO. Here's one more recent video of Matt:

This video is on over optimization where Matt is answering the question Is over optimization bad for a website?

If you want to see all the Webmaster Central team videos, go to YouTube. You will surely find wealth of information there.

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Paid Clicks Still Up with Bing

Bings flash in the pan"supposed to burn out a while ago"is extending every day, at least in one important area: paid clicks. So far this month, weve seen that

Bing might be making more per query than Google
Bing saw an 8% increase in paid clicks and a 20% query volume lift
Bing is taking a hardline on click fraud
Bing is increasing its searcher penetration and overall share of SERPs (in the post with the best Bing title ever: Pre Bing Sting With a Post Bing Bang?)

Efficient Frontier is back again this week with more good news: Bing continues to see increases in their paid clicks:

According to our data analysis, Bing expanded its share of paid clicks for the two weeks post launch. Bings share of paid clicks is up 13% for the second week post launch as compared to pre-launch. And, it represents an incremental 5% lift over the first week.

So in many respects, Bing is off to a respectable start. But will it last? What do you think?

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Three Yahoo Employees to Microsoft

Im not about to turn Marketing Pilgrim into a collection of childrens nursery rhymes, but news that three Yahoo employees have defected to Microsoft did bring this to mind:

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmers wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a sight in your life,
As three blind mice?

It might be a little unfair to suggest that running into the open arms of Microsoft is akin to a career de-tailing but it does make you wonder how bad is it over at Yahoo? After all, they have a new CEO who appears to be saying all the right things"even if some are laced with an f-bomb or two"so why would the following simply bail?

Kevin Timmons " vice president of Operations
Yongdong Wang " vice president of international search
Knut Risvik " former Yahoo chief architect

Ok, so Risvik had already bailed on Yahoo for a stint at Google, but two blind mice wouldnt have worked for this post. Besides, the fact that Risvik left both Yahoo and Google for Microsoft makes you wonder what it is that the Redmond company is dangling as an incentive. Is it the promise of untold riches, or is Bing really that good?

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300 Million QandA Database from Ask.com

Ask.com has come up with a positive news that would be great for the search world. It has recently unveiled the proprietary database of 300 million Q&A pairs for the users in the United Kingdom and United States.

Ask.com has used the proprietary core search technology that was launched in the end of 2008 for achieving 300 million high-quality Q&A pairs. The entire work was done by crawling and indexing questions and answers from different sources across the web. Later, the semantic search technology advancements were applied by ask.com in rephrasing, clustering and filtering about insignificant or less meaningful answer formats.

It is made sure that the result in Q&A database is fine-tuned to give the best answer to customers on the very first time. For example, if your question is How do I change a guitar chord?, Ask.com will give answers with step-by-step instructions from different authoritative sources. Thus, you will get more options to select from and to get the most relevant answer. The unique Q&A results are also blended in the standard web search results of Ask.com

Scott Kim, EVP of Technology, Ask.com said, Search industry is heading towards delivering the best answers through semantic search technology and ask is the best place to lead the industry. There are countless answers on net that make it difficult for the consumers to get what they are looking for. Our Q&A channel aims at giving the exact answers to the searchers through an advanced search technology.

comScore in a research said that visitors enter search queries on Ask.com in the form of question, which is three times more than the queries entered on any other major search engine. It is also said that the user frequency, loyalty and retention is more within Ask.com Q&A channel.

If you will click on the Lots of Answers link on the homepage of Ask.com, you will find Q&A pairing database of 300 million. To get more information about Q&A database, visit the blog post of Ask.com

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WebProNews SEM Video

I know my video references are starting to seem like a homage to Mike McDonalds efforts over at WebProNews, but he just keeps delivering videos and interviews worthy of your eyes and ears.

This week we uncover the future of Search as predicted by Rebecca Lieb, Vice President of Econsultancy. Mike quizzed Rebecca at the recent SMX Advanced conference in Seattle.

More WebProNews Videos

So what did Rebeccas crystal ball of Search have to say? A couple of predictions and ideas that she raised which resonated with me Ive detailed below, but of course watch the video to digest it yourself.

The social and behavioural data will be cause for heavy investment by search engines. Rebecca sees the data available in our various social networks as the foreseeable pot of gold for the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Bing/MSN.
Apps will play a much bigger role in search, especially the mobile arena. Google etc, could lose their stranglehold on this space, as apps steal market share.
The importance of reputation management in search marketing strategies will become even more important as social media adoption balloons.

While the distance of her predictions arent all that far into the future, they do reinforce some of the discussions weve had internally with the ineedhits team. More importantly they also provide some guide as to what you should be considering in your plans for the next couple of years.

Its only a short video, so have a watch a see which of her other predictions resonate with you. Feel free to share them below!

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Bing Buzz

While not the longest timeframe to be measuring in and considering all the Bing buzz surrounding its launch, Microsoft has got to feel that at least they are keeping everyone else out of the news with Bing having some early success.

In a case of Ive got some good news and Ive got some bad news if you are Microsoft the bad news of search traffic pre-Bing in May 09, well, pretty much sucked. PCWorld Canada reports that Nielsens search engine report for the month revealed a bitter pill for any search engine to swallow

Microsofts Live/MSN search engine was the only one among the top five that saw its search usage shrink last month compared with May 2008.

Nothing worse than search engine usage shrinkage (once again for you Seinfeld fans, shrinkage does occur). What makes this number worse is the fact that overall search queries grew by just over 20% for the time period.

But like a super hero it was Never fear, Bing is here! at the end of May just in time for the summer months. The results to this point? Pretty good for Bing according to comScore.

It appears that Microsoft Bing has continued to generate interest from the market for the second consecutive week, said Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president. These early data reflect a continued positive market reaction to Bing in the initial stages of its launch.

Over at SearchEngineLand, Danny Sullivan goes a little further and sees that the celebration may be research specific. Amongst the charts and graphs of various research results is the data from Compete and

Competes figures show that the launch has created no gain in search share.

So who has the real deal? Which information is correct? Does it matter at this point in the race? Its likely that this data will be fodder for everyone to predict the demise of Google or the revealing of a chink in the armor of the search monster. Truth is that its just fun facts for now. Only a long term pattern of increased market share for Bing will tell whether the introduction of the decision engine was a seminal moment in search or just another blip on the radar of the good ship Google.

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Google Search Share Continues to Drop

Earlier today Nielsen Online (pdf) released the latest search share rankings. Figures are pretty much what one would expect, Google far in the lead followed by Yahoo and MSN, but this past month Google has taken another small hit.

April and May of 2009 each saw Google lose a bit of ground. Back in March their search share was 64.2%, and in April it was down to 64%. May has seen another drop, bringing them down to 63.2%, a full percentage point in 2 months. In these same two months, Yahoo has increased a total of 1.4% to 17.2.

Its no question that Google has a very strong hold on the market, and thats not going to change any time soon, and I certainly do not expect to see Yahoo spring way in front, but with the recent success and initial increases Microsofts new Bing has brought, I would not be surprised to see Google drop a bit more once the month of June has completed. In the past 2 months MS has dropped 0.9%, but I suspect they will recoup this and then some of this.

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