There are many changes
taking place in the top search engines.
Google, Yahoo, and MSN are all adapting
to the many transformations occuring
within the search industry. Because of
these changes, I thought I would take
the time to give you an overview of
what's taking place within the market
and how it affects you as a webmaster.
To begin, let's start with Google.
Back in 2003, Google would index and
crawl the web about once a month and everything would
change all in one shot. WebMasterWorld would actually
name these updates with names like Brandy, Florida, and
Bourbon.
Google has moved away from these monthly
updates to an ever- changing process. You can now see
daily changes within the SERPS with the biggest changes
occuring during algorithm updates.
Late June and July of this year saw some
major changes within the Google algorithm. If your site
was hurt from this algorithm change, you should
re-examine your site and be sure to follow the
guidelines below:
1. Pursue a continuous linking campaign
with other quality sites. This can be achieved through
article syndication, exchanging RSS feeds, submitting to
directories or syndicating a press release.
2. Create a Google sitemap to increase
the coverage of your webpages.
3. Make sure your site has a clear
navigation system. Every page should be reachable from
at least one static link.
4. Avoid all deceptive or manipulative
behavior. Don't get involved in linking schemes. Avoid
all forms of cloaking and avoid hidden text or hidden
links.
Besides the changes taking place within
organic search results, there have also been recent
changes within Google Adwords. In July of 2006, Google
updated their landing page algorithm. These changes have
harmed a number of online marketers. Many advertisers
who had been paying five or ten cents a click are now
required to bid at least 50 cents to a dolloar or more.
There are also other advertisers who kept their bid
prices, but those bids are now buying only 3rd or 4th
page positions when they used to buy first page
positions.
Some advertisers have even been
effectively shutdown.
However, keep in mind that not all
advertisers have been affected. There are four main
types of sites that have been hit the hardest. These
include:
# one page sales letter websites
# squeeze pages
# adsense sites (particularly those
involved in Adsense arbitrage)
# affiliate sites
The new landing page algorithm gives a
quality score to every landing page. Fortunately for us,
Google has left some clues as to how they are ranking
these pages.
Below are 3 general guidelines that will
help those who have been hurt by the recent updates.
1. Provide relevant and substantial
content.
2. Link to the page on your site that
provides the most useful and accurate information
related to the product or service in your ad.
3. Distinguish sponsored links from the
rest of your site's content.
To stay in accordance with the new
quality score guidelines, you may want to remove all
Adsense ads from your landing pages, create or find more
original content for your sites, ensure that your
landing page has at least 500 words, and check to make
sure that your ad relates perfectly with the content of
your landing page.
Google is getting smarter everyday. Our
job is not to trick the search engines but to deliver
truly valuable information to our visitors. By doing
this along with some basic on-page and off-page
optimization techniques, you should perform very well in
the search engines over the long-haul.
There have also been some recent changes
at MSN.
They have changed the name of their
search engine spiders. Before the changes, they were all
called "msnbot,". Fortunately, they are now starting to
group their spiders into separate categories.
# The MSN Shopping bot is msnbot-products.
# The MSN News bot is msnbot-news.
# The MSN Image Search bot is
msnbot-media.
# The MSN search bot is still called
msnbot.
It should now be much easier for
webmasters to decipher what's really going on in their
web logs. In addition, webmasters can also block
specific bots if they need to, without blocking MSN
Search.
Last, but not least, there is Yahoo. This
company has experienced some very exciting changes
within the past few months.
One of these is the launch of a new Yahoo
Search Crawler. The new crawler is faster and more
efficient at visiting websites. As a result, website
owners should notice as much as a 25% reduction in the
number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the Yahoo
crawler.
Yahoo also released an index update in
mid-July. You can read all about it at http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000327.html
.
In addition, there are a number of other,
smaller-based search engines who are leading the way in
the future of search engine technology. One of the best
examples I have seen is Eurekster.com.
They have developed a social search
engine powered by the wisdom of crowds.
Eurekster makes use
of its own SearchMemory technology, which remembers the
sites a user finds useful and presents them higher in
the results the next time they search. Then, Eurekster
lets a user share their searches and sites with friends.
For example, if you do a search on "internet marketing",
you'll see sites related to "internet marketing" that
your friends also found useful. These results are marked
with an icon.
This personalization helps to increase
relevancy in a way that no algorithm can match.
I expect to see many changes within
Google, Yahoo, and MSN in upcoming years as they merge
search engine technology with social search in order to
make search results more relevant as well as
personalized. One thing is clear, the future evolution
of search is sure to be exciting to watch.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kim Roach is a staff writer
and editor for the
SiteProNewsand SEO-News
newsletters. You can also find additional tips and
news on webmaster and SEO topics by Kim at the
SiteProNews blog (blog.sitepronews.com/). Kim’s email
is: kim @ seo-news.com
