Posted Tuesday, 11/06/2012 by Bryan Wisotsky
Recently, Matt Cuts the head of Google’s Webspam team and de facto mouthpiece of the Search Engine’s SEO policies debunked myth that buying AdWords – or Google advertising— gives your website an “algorithmic boost”. Also, buying AdWords doesn’t afford you special treatment in unlocking secrets to better organic rankings.  That is to say that if you spend $10,000/month on Google ads you aren’t assigned a special Google representative who advises you on how to rank better in search results for keywords.
To keep you abreast of our current initiatives for your overall online presence we want to address some of the most recent changes from the most popular search engine, Google.
Microsoft hired Mark Penn – political strategist and CEO of PR firm Burson-Marsteller – in a new role which has him working directly with CEO Steve Ballmer as the VP of Strategic and Special Projects. The goal is simple: ramp up searches on Bing, Microsoft’s search engine.
“Pogosticking” behavior occurs when a Google visitor enters the search engine, clicks on a result, and subsequently goes back to the results page and selects another listing or performs a new search. Now Google is fighting back with the launch of a new feature — Google is launching “Get More” links that appear when a searcher comes back to the results page.
With the devastation in Haiti from the recent earthquake, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are trying to do their part to help support the disaster relief.
The term PR0, pronounced ‘PR Zero’, refers to a Google PageRank of zero. PageRank is Google’s system of assigning every page within their database a value, or PageRank number, between 0 and 10. This system is based on the amount of links to a site from other websites (or the amount of inbound links to a site). A higher value, such as a PR 9 or PR10, is a better ranked page with more websites linking to that site.
The latest move in the Google/Microsoft legal battle involves a stay by Judge Ronald M. Whyte regarding Google’s countersuit against Microsoft.
The legal matters began last July when Microsoft filed suit against Google in Seattle ‘s King County Superior Court. The suit claimed that Google’s hiring of former Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee breached their non-compete agreement with Lee. Google, in response, filed a countersuit in an attempt to have the non-compete clause declared invalid.
Announcement:
As Google continues to grow in popularity and offer new features and benefits for its users, people are taking advantage of all Google has to offer. To keep its users on track and organized in both their work and personal lives, Google introduces Google Calendar, which is a free Internet calendar service.
For the longest time, Google had a serious problem with its blogroll, indexing algorithm in the Google Blog Search. Last year when Google rolled out full text blog indexing and blog search users immediately began to complain of outdated listings. The outdated listings were caused by backed up indexing and the inclusion of link command results.
Custom Search by Google allows for anyone to create their own custom search engine. This application if often used to add Google search bars on a website to search only that website. If the website for your practice contains a lot of information about cosmetic surgery, adding a Google Custom Search to your website will help visitors navigate your site.
The number four search engine, Ask.com, is not expected to be around much longer. Running behind Google, Yahoo, and Bing, Ask has virtually no prospects of increasing its user base or gaining on the three giants. To this end, Barry Diller, President of Ask.com’s parent company, IAC recently made a statement that is sure to change the future of the company. Diller said specifically, “we’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes, and it is unlikely that we would be the consolidator.”
Last spring, Google announced a new component to its Webmaster Tools. This feature, called “change of address,” helps web designers and webmasters alert Google if a website changes domain names but otherwise remains for the same purpose as on the original domain. Google will automatically update their index to reflect the new URL. This update remains in effect for 180 days. By this time, Google will have sent its regular web crawlers to index the site as per usual.
Google Launched Search Wiki about one year ago today, in November 2008. Search Wiki was a major update to the Google search service that allows users to edit search listings. This interactive feature of Google is set to run automatically once a user has signed into their Google account. Once signed in a series of options becomes available that allows a user to reorder the ranking of results, delete individual listings altogether, or add notes and comments to specific searches.