Oh, How Google Has Changed…
There have been many visible and invisible changes to the Google search engine this year (2010). You may have already noticed some of the aesthetic changes in terms of the look and feel of the world’s most beloved search portal. However, there have also been some very important algorithmic changes in the back end as well. In this article we will look at how some of these changes may affect your Googling!
Interface
The new look and feel of Google bodes a more modern and powerful overall search engine. Apart from the obvious and well publicised logo update, Google have implemented a variety of new search tools and filters on the left which cater to the needs of the evolved, modern day search engine user. This has been dubbed “Universal Search”.
Users can now more easily filter and customise their searches based on the specific media or service they are looking for. Sure this has been available in a different form in the past but Google is now cementing these advanced search filters as one of the cornerstones of their search interface. The universal search toolbar now also provides a variety of extra search tools such as timeline and context specific searches to name a few.
But universal search has yet another trick up its sleeve. This is the ability of users to sort search results based on how often a website has been updated. This means users can now access the latest fresh content without the hassle of having to trawl through a list of outdated results. Basically, universal search has made it even easier for users to switch between filters and views of the same search query in order to retrieve search results that are more applicable to their needs.
Finally, another notable new addition to the Google tool belt is Google Squared. This fascinating tool allows users to search for a product, category, service or any other entity and compare the results in a detailed matrix of information (in real time!). It’s just another helpful innovation from the good people at Google. Try it out for yourself here: http://www.google.com/squared.
Algorithm
As most search engine optimisation specialists would be aware, Google’s new search algorithm ‘Caffeine’ has changed the way in which Google looks at your website content. Google is now able to crawl a huge range of internet content (including video, music, news and social media) – faster and more reliably than it ever has before. This has enabled Google to understand the content and deliver a rich experience to the users in an array of new types of relevant and up to date search results.
With Google’s intelligence ever increasing, it has now become more important than ever to use reliable, white hat SEO techniques in order to achieve great search engine rankings as Google is becoming more and more adept at differentiating between real content and spam/scam SEO work. For more information on how Google Caffeine may affect your business, read Andrew Knight’s article – What is Google Caffeine?
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Are you a local business that only operates within a specific region but think you could be doing more with the search engines? Would you like to have more traffic to your site, and in turn more customers? If the answer is yes for either of these questions you should consider the potential of SEO.
In this article we will look into how a local business can benefit from SEO and what steps you have to take in order to conquer the market and have the edge over your competitors.
The trend of potential users looking to the internet for a specific product or service is increasing rapidly, and therefore it’s important that local businesses ensure their website is optimised for search engine queries.
So how can you make your website important to the search engines and attract more traffic? Professional SEO services can be expensive, particularly if you’re a small business.
The answer is to optimise your site for geo-targeted keywords. A geo-targeted keyword is a keyword that only targets a specific location, eg: “hairdresser Toowong” or “Chinese restaurant Southbank.” The idea being that users who search these types of terms are more highly qualified leads and more likely to turn into paying customers.
By optimising in this way, you’re essentially allowing the search engines themselves to act as a filter whereby only high quality traffic is directed to your site.
Research into search trends is showing that this type of approach, particularly in industries where locality is important (eg: home services, dining, etc), is proving to be a very profitable way to cost-effectively drive more traffic from the search engines.
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