Google Puts Fear into SEO Market
Google, in a posting on its blog, said a new feature known as Search Wiki allows users to individualise search results by promoting or demoting according to their own preferences.
SearchWiki lets users who have a Google account rearrange their search results, re-ranking websites by moving them up or down in the results page.
Useless or spammy search results can be deleted and others added.
“With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site;’ Google said. “You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong.”
The California based, organisation said the changes in rankings will be shown the next time users log on and will not change searches done by other users … yet.
SEO practitioners are scared that announcement could lead to the fragmentation of their SEO markets with search results being inconsistent across user profiles.
SearchWiki marks the first time that Google has encouraged users to modify their search results.
A video explaining the new feature is online at googleblog.blogspot.com.
Google dominates the internet search market, being used for more than 90 per cent of all Australian searches in October 2008, according to industry monitors.
The company also announced in another blog posting that it was discontinuing Lively, a virtual world website similar to Second Life, at the end of December 2008.
“In July we launched lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in unique ways,” a spokes-bot for Google said.
“But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks, not every bet is going to pay off,” it added.
“It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritise our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps (applications) business.”
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How to keep Google happy and coming back for more
There’s are things that you can do to keep Google happy and improve your search engine rankings. In a nutshell they are:
1. Add new content. If Google notices that you add content on a regular basis it will visit your site more regularly. If Google does not see a change in your web site in a 90 day period, it will set a flag not to visit for another 90 days.
An easy way to add new content is to have an industry news section on your web site. Add a new story every week or so. This is why Google is in love with blogs - blogs change regularly and tend to have relevant and useful content rather than just corporate patter and spin.
2. Make the content interesting and relevant. By creating good content you will encourage people to link to your web site. This will improve your Google PageRank, improve your search engine results AND generate natural traffic. This is called link baiting.
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READER QUESTION
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Stephanie from Coffs Harbour asks: “Does online video marketing work?”
Answer: Yes, most definitely and very quickly too. There’s over 100 ideo streaming sites that are desperate for new content. The better known ones being Google Video, Youtube, Metacafe and DailyMotion.
Google will pickup video’s within 48 hours of posting. The secret is to put the key phrase is in the video. I
suspect that Google ranks video content higher than most other content because of the extra effort involved in producing it. And the video doesn’t have to be full motion either. A simple recorded PowerPoint presentation, with or without narration, will rank equally as well.