Google is allowing the world to test the latest major changes to the way they carry out searches.  This is being referred to as the caffeine update and could be quite a big change.  The test environment can be found at:

www2.sandbox.google.com

This is bringing back searches from the Google .com site but if you want to know how your page will look on the UK serps you can add &gl=UK to the end of the query string and hey presto you get the UK version.  This also works for &gl=ie in Ireland so I’m guessing you could transpose any tld to get the relevant results for you.

You will have to excuse me for being a little late in writing this article. It’s not that I have any contempt for this partnership, but the news that Yahoo and Microsoft have finally done the deal is a bit like the news that couple you know who have lived together for 10 years and had three kids are announcing to the world they are getting married. The sentiment is more, ‘good for you’, than ‘congratulations!’

So what does this mean? Well Yahoo is going to be powered by Bing.com, Microsoft’s new search engine and Yahoo plans to control the advertising.

Does this affect anything? From a consumers point of view probably not. Bing.com would like to think it is different from other search engines, but in terms of significant differences, there are very few. Yahoo has become far more focused on advertising in recent times so from a technology perspective there is very little to talk about.

As far as any SEO’s will be concerned the change will be, we won’t be talking about Google then Microsoft and Yahoo anymore. From now on it will just be Google then Microsoft. I truly hope oneday there will be a genuine challenge to Google as competition and change is a good thing. However this deal won’t deliver that change. I just hope in some way it lays the foundations.

So the Google Vince update, which according to Google is definitely not an “Update”, but rather a minor change done by a guy called Vince, has reared it’s head again.  It is a change to the Google Algorithm which has had quite a major impact on SERPs (especially for such a minor change) the main one being that the web pages of large brands and corporations seem to be fairing rather better than before.  Initially the change was implemented in Feb 09 but a second change in July 09 also appears to have had an impact (especially here in the UK).  This seems to have had most impact on general single word or short phrase keywords and that’s the experience our clients have had.

This is an interesting strategy by Google and not one I’m too convinced about.  Promoting well made web sites, with good content and lots of other relevant sites linking to it has been the staple of Google’s success and I’m not sure the public necessarily want to find just the high street stores when they’re searching on Google (especially ones with poor websites, and they do exist!).  Whether this is right or not remains to be seen, I’m sure Google have done a lot of research before making this move but instinct tells that their USP may be devalued a little here.

But the question that’s really on everyone’s lips is how do you become a brand, in the eyes of Google (well it’s on my lips).  The ever helpful Google doesn’t like to think of the word “brand” but rather of “trust” and “authority” (see the Matt Cutts video on youtube), so how do you become one of those in the eyes of Google?  Well on analysing some of the big movers it seems, rather obviously, that it’s a lot to do with popularity and traffic (using the likes of Alexa).  I’m wondering whether the browsing information coming back from the Google Toolbar is of a high enough quality to start basing more weighted SERP decisions on.

Well big brands have clearly moved up the SERPs and whilst it’s certainly not the end of the road for SEO on small business websites this change has made it harder.  We’ll just have to re double our efforts and hope Google slowly reduce the weighting they give to brands.

Bing.com - Microsoft's new Search Engine

Microsoft’s new search at Bing.com is apparently going to help people make better decisions when they search online. Because of this Microsoft has deemed Bing to be a ‘Decision Engine’ as it’s being touted as helping customers go beyond search in dealing with information overload.

So what is Bing? Well first and foremost Bing is a search engine. It’s difficult to tell if it’s any different than its predecessor or any of its competitors, as on the surface it behaves very similarly. After performing some testing, to understand the implications on sites I work on and how they would rank, I did notice there was a small variation in the results compared to Google, but nothing I could call significant. I noticed there were far fewer listed sites than Google but then again this isn’t any different to it’s predecessor.

OK, so what is different about Bing? According to Microsoft, Bing is focused on four key areas; making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business. These claims are all very well and good but my initial testing couldn’t prove any of them. I can’t say I understand exactly how the focus on these key areas would take effect, but I could not find anything to demonstrate these claims through the search engine results pages (SERPs) being returned.

Obviously Bing is still in it’s infancy and making any sort of judgement about it now could prove premature, although I welcome competition in the search engine market. The lack of genuine competition creates inherent problems which restricts how we are able to use the web. Time will tell if Bing.com becomes just another search engine or whether it can live up to its hype and offer users something genuinely different – which if it could might allow it to take some of Google’s market share.