If you keep an eye on things that are happening on Google, you will find some interesting things going on at this moment.
Ranking and Google Changes
First I want to point you to two video's from webpronews.com, the first one is an interview with Bruce Clay about this presentation Ranking is Dead where is looks at how Universal search is going to effect your Search Engine Page results.
The other one is at the same site, but now an interview with Matt Cutts on some of the Changes at Google were he talks about some of the things that Bruce Clay pointed out.
From both interviews you can see that Universal Search is going to target your search result pages based on previous searches and Local Search results based on IP address.
The latter is af course already in place where Google will use IP country ranges to lead you to other Data Centers and gives local and country language specific results.
Universal search is mostly referred to as showing results based on your previous searches , but this time even if you are not logged into your Google mail account!
That might scare some privacy concerned people… take into account that Google, Live and Yahoo already have a lot of information on your search history, be it via cookies, or via your DSL Provider that gives you a nice IP address.
That IP address wil stay the same for a loooong time,which is great! For Search Engines that is…
Actually listening to Bruce Clay I find a lot of things he is predicting for 2009 are already in place, it is just the flick of a switch for Google to turn them on.
Searchwiki
One other new thing you might have seen if you are logged into your Google account and you do searches is the new Searchwiki function.
Next to each Title in the result-page there are two little icons, one for UP and one for Delete, well the last one is to actually remove that result form your own search page.
So now you can get those old or not relevant results out of your own search results, but how will this effect the total results in the long run?
I can imagine Google using those results of up and delete actions to improve results in general.
If you look at large enough numbers of people “voting” on search results you could clean up the total results and make them even more relevant and up-to-date as they are now.
Afraid of your competition “voting” your site out of the results? Don't worry, as you heard before ranking is dead anyway.
But in fact I guess Google will have some algorithm in place that will show that people are trying to play the system.
The effects on SEO
Both Bruce and Matt mentioned it in their interview, as smart SEO is looking no longer at Search Page results rankings but at Conversion and is deep into analyzing his server logs.
A smart SEO is already working on Blogs, News, Images and Video to keep up with the new upcoming personalized search results and to provide your visitors with the quality content they are looking for.
But one thing I am really looking forward too is that importance of links to your site is going to be downgraded and real quality content is getting a more prominent place in the results pages.
This time driven by your own visitors that don't have spam sites but are really liking your content.
Well, at first let me thank you for this nice article. I really agree with you on how your content should be the most important referrence on googles search results. The problem with ‘weighing’ the incoming links is that its way too easy to ‘fraud’ the system by for instance buying links
Nice article Hummer. Im excited to see what Google is going to break out for 2009. If anything, this will be more for you to write about, and even more for webmasters and seo experts to learn.
Great article. Also I think that Google is changing your strategy. This want eat all the cake. From many time all SEO guys tell: Content is the king.
Yes, well sure content is King, but isn’t it true that also popularity of your page is very important. I mean, on a competative word, the battle on toppositions can be very hard. If searchengines think of you page as important, your ranking will be better as site which have their content optimized just as good or even better than yours.
@Linkbuilden: Content is getting Bigger then King. You will see that incoming links will not have that much impact on your Google rankings anymore.
It is still a valid choice on Yahoo which Results are largely build on incoming links.
In my opion Google will be using the “ratings” that their users will give on a specific search results.
Just as RSS Feed subscribers will be of influence of the rankings.
So poularity of your page is a true factor, but it is not going to be based any longer by just the number of links that are coming into the site.
Google Ranking changes or we can say improves year by year. So, what is new in it?
I think the new thing is “SearchWiki”. If it becomes popular rapidly, then we are going to see dramatic changes in Google Ranking. And, as a smart seo, I shouldn’t look at SERPs. It is true. But when you have client who does not know anything about seo,what will you do?. Clients only need results. Yeah Conversations and good, targeted traffic is most important. But Google does not put them in top ten or twenty or does not give them good PR, they start thinking that we, seo people, are not working good enough. And I think that’s the problem, lots of small seo companies facing now a days.
Google updates will be a determining factor on how we do SEO.
Its very daunting all these new changes for a website owner like me. As my rankings have just gone from page 1 to page 6 and i have no idea why, most probably to do with all the new changes going on. Im quite interested to learn more about if having a video on your site will help rankings as i now know that youtube scan the content of all their new videos that are added, so im now thinking google will start doing the same and picking up on the content within the video and picking up on keywords which will be interesting.
Scary times ahead for SEO professionals and website masters, time to rethink
Google is just trying to maintain their reputation for returning pertinent results (which is what helped to make them what they are). They just keep adjusting, moving the target to keep the content field level. It’s the “gaming the system” by others that brings the new challenges to everyone else.
It’s great to find such a well laid out article, thanks for the advice.
Im all for the changes as I think google ranks alot of junk and old pages at the moment, for example, last week i wanted to buy anew TV, i wanted to know do I buy a plasma or LCD, google showed me a review from 2003 as its no 1 ranking page !
This is excellent info and sums the ranking flip flop topic well. I plan on bookmarking this and showing it to my clients when they ask why their position rankings fluctuate. Thanks again!
Interesting read, but how much of this is speculation driven by techies wanting this change? I have to think that Google can’t fundamentally change the nature of search on a dime, it’s got to be something introduced gradually. Otherwise, there would be too much chaos, and in this economic climate more chaos is not needed.
yeah one of the big changes that Google seems of introduced is the way they treat brands. It seems to be making it much harder for smaller companies to rank well.
At least the brand algorithm change hasn’t come over to the UK yet!
by chance what is the ratio of Universal search to normal search weighting? Anyone have a guess on that? When I put pen to paper, I think it’s about equal, but not sure.
Content is definitely king but it always helps to be popular too! I gave up on Searchwiki after about 5 minutes as I found it to be a waste of time. I don’t imagine I am alone in that?
Nice article.In my opinion Google is changing its strategy.Wanna hear more from you about Google.Thanks
google is changing wether its for the better we will have to wait and see
Google is changing all the time,and all changes,if you check ,are going in way that suites to adsense and adwords. Mo money,mo problem!
Well it’s about time for the changes. The most important thing is to find what you need fast and easy and google is doing everything to provide this service.
That’s totally silly when “seo experts” are going all around the net dropping spam links.