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.

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.

Well a couple of weekends ago it seemed that Google shuffled the pack again and the usual bleating on SEO forums followed – “I’ve dropped from the first page to the 20th page” etc. It seems to me that Google have a real focus on long term link building and have tactics in place to ensure that the quick hit link builders, who see success in the short term, are being hammered eventually as their links are re-evaluated.

So the question occured to me how do you protect yourself from these regular updates? The aim is to have established links from indexed pages with useful & unique content, that matches the link text and the target page. What better way to do this that to control the lot. OK, so it’s a long term strategy but with more and more tools available it’s never been easier. What would you give for a network of 20-30 indexed pages with a google page rank giving exclusive “votes” to your site? This could be a reality within a year, even 6 months and it won’t be you bleating on the forums!

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.

Google search engine

If you’ve been around online marketing for long enough it’s highly likely you’ll hear somebody make the claim, ‘I can guarantee you number 1 position on Google natural listing!’ Obviously this is a fantastic claim but can it be true, is it possible to guarantee it?

Achieving a number 1 position on Google can be very difficult but it can also be relatively straight forward. The main factor to account for is competition. If the chosen search term is a long multi-word string with only a few other sites ranked for that term, none of which are focused on that term then it should be quite simple. However if your chosen search term is a single word with a huge amount of competition, with a great deal of this competition focused on that term then it is going to be a lot more difficult, however it is certainly not impossible.

I had the opportunity to work with one client where part of the strategy was to focus on a single word search term which was the most generic one for their market where this term was highly competitive, having around 85 million results on Google. Well we did achieve the number 1 natural ranking,  but this was at the cost of other parts of the strategy. Subsequently we found that the competition, some of whom were much bigger than my client with much deeper pockets didn’t want to be pushed down the rankings and reinvested heavily in regaining the position. We also found out that the word we had chased so hard wasn’t particularly good in terms of return for our extra investment. An interesting learning curve knowing that we could achieve number 1 position for a highly competitive search term and equally interesting to know it didn’t necessarily give us the edge in our strategy. It should be noted the cost of achieving this was significant and the resources at hand where not just those of the client. I have to say I gave far more than I had to myself as I was keen to see what we could achieve given the opportunity. This was a definitely one-off, if I had had multiple clients at the same time with the same requirement I certainly wouldn’t of been able to do the same for them all.

The answer to the question whether you can guarantee number 1 position on Google is yes, in theory you can achieve a number 1 position for anything. However to do this you will have to have the appropriate resources. If the term you are chasing is highly competitive these resources are going to have to be significant. Of course it helps if you know what you are doing so that you might be able to limit the splurge of resources to the minimum required but this could still be considerable. If someone tells you they can guarantee you a number 1 natural position on Google then you need to tread very cautiously. Of course for any term it’s possible as there is always a number 1 position on Google but if it is being guaranteed then I would be highly suspicious.

Google SEO starter guide

If you are just starting out learning about SEO you might like to know that Google provides a handy little PDF document to help you out. I am still surprised when a client assumes that Google wouldn’t provide you with this sort of basic information. Google isn’t a closed book and they do want new website owners to better understand how to achieve a proper Google ranking. Please remember Google is vehicle to search for websites and it is in their interest for all websites to be optimised for search engines so they easily understand those sites’ content and therefore how significant a ranking it should be awarding for appropriate searches.

If you haven’t already read the starter guide then I highly recommend you spend 20 minutes doing so.

Update: This guide has just been released in a variety of other languages.

Google search engine optimization starter guide