google

Many websites that use to dominate Google rankings are finding themselves dropping to the second or third page on keyword phrases that they once were near the top of the first page. Often these sites were affected by major algorithm changes by Google, the two most famous being Penguin and Panda.

Google has created a shopping for B2B area as well as created a Google verified supplier program. This is in the beta stage and is currently limited to US and suppliers in the electronics category.

Google’s privacy update last October has resulted in about 15% of search traffic being labeled as “not provided” Basically the search term is encrypted for anyone who is logged into Google. Also, Firefox has announced that will be making a similar change to searches.

Sometimes it is easy to get the impression that Google wants to drive SEO companies out of business. Certainly there are many SEO techniques that Google considers “cheating” and would like to do away with. Most notably would be link building for the sole purpose of increasing rankings. Google feels that some of the practices of link building and buying sabotages the goal of presenting content that have the greatest chance of satisfying the searchers need.

Recently Google’s Matt Cutts “sort of” announced an algorithm change designed to address overly optimized or “SEO’ed” sites. No one is sure when the algorithm change will take place or if it already has.

A while back Google announced that it was “adjusting” its algorithm to address a problem with some sites that carried a lot of banner advertising. Specifically, Google heard complaints from searchers about coming to a website with so many banners advertising that they had to scroll way down before finding the content. Thus Google stated it will be “devaluing” sites that carry so many banner ads that the actual content falls below the fold.

As I stated in the last blog, 6 years ago you just had to show up. Today you have to stand out. So what are some ways to make your AdWords stand out?

Google just recently announced its “freshness” update. Essentially this is an enhancement on it Google Caffeine that was rolled out last year. Google now can find content updates within in minutes and has the ability to display them on related search queries

IF you don’t already know this, then here is how you set up your Microsoft Ad Center campaign so that the results can be tracked with Google Analytics.

Google modified broad match gives PPC users another dimension in optimizing their pay per click accounts.

Google is not perfect. Google strongly prefers refining or changing its ranking algorithms to find the perpetrators as opposed to manually reviewing sites. This is understandable because there are billions of web pages out there and Google could not afford to hire 100s of thousands of people to do that police work, but a computer program has no judgement for exceptions or feelings for its consequences.

What if you are not a local business? Should you even care what your local listing is like? Should you bother claiming your listing? I think you should and here are four reasons why.