Google is on the move again making minor adjustments to the SERPS. Usually that means within reasonable amount of time we will be seeing more bigger changes at Google, so it is time to keep our eyes open again.
Yesterday we spotted that Google is now offering you the possibility to thank your Google+ friends who +1-ed an item so it would show up in your search results. Today we can highlight another three changes to how Google displays personalized results in the SERPS. (more…)
Google’s Panda Update now seems to be a monthly refresh of the Google Index, changing the search landscape constantly. It means that every month sites can either get more or less visibility.
For an SEO this can be frustrating. One month they are the winners, next month the losers. You can hardly make any predictions anymore, except for that your site needs to be ‘Panda proof’ all the time: you need the unique content and you need the value in the site.
Next to the Panda update there is the Venice update, which is focussed on improving local results in the SERPS. Sometimes things happen which you wouldn’t predict but are actually quite obvious. What was thought to be the last Panda Update showed some suprising stats in the UK for example. Searchmetrics calculated who ‘won’ and ‘lost’ in visibility. The biggest winners (Twitter, YouTube and the BBC) were not surprising. The biggest losers were: Amazon.com, Live.com and Apple.com. There is a logical explanation for that however: its the Venice Update. (more…)
Here’s another interesting small change I just spotted in the search results. We are now all familiar with the “your friends X,Y,Z and x-number of people +1′d this” texts below the search results. It shows us who of our friends, or to be more specific who from our social circles, have shared, or +1ed a specific search result. It is part of personalized search and it will trigger most of the searchers to click on a result quicker than they would if there was just a title, link and description.
Now Google seems to have taken another step to make things more personal and to ‘push’ Google+ at the same time. Next to a ”your friends X,Y,Z and x-number of people +1′d this” text it now says “Thank them”. And you can “thank them” on Google+ off course. (more…)
Google is constantly trying to get a grip on spam, both on the organic as on the paid side of search. They have entire spam teams dedicated to finding and getting rid of those trying to falsely manipulate not just the results, but also the users.
One of the main areas in which spammers are active is free web hosting. Many spammers try to get cheap and easy ways to create hundreds of sites all aimed at spam. That means that those who think they have a nice site for cheap money might just be part of a network which is not considered to be ‘clean’ by Google. Potentially that could hurt also the ‘innocent’ ones.
Google therefore is now trying to protect these users and is giving hints and tips to those free or low cost web hosting services to make sure spammers will not abuse them. (more…)
Almost simultaneously with the announcement of SSL Search going global Google announced that it is taking your search history across devices.
This means that if you are searching on your desktop when logged in and you go to your tablet or phone, provide you with information on the place you searched for on your desktop. (more…)
Last October Google set the SEO World on fire when they started to encrypt searches, using SSL. Searching from https://www.google.com (note the “s”) will mean some search queries are encrypted.
That meant that SEOs were getting a lot less referral data than before. In your Analytics you can now find several referrals to “not provided”. Until recently that was just for searches coming from Google.com. Now Google is rolling this out to the entire world. (more…)
It is March 1st today, which means that Google’s new privacy policy officially is “on”. Just a month ago the new policy was announced.
It now seems as if Google might run into a wall when it comes to European regulations. France’s regulator this week said the new policies might violate the European Union’s data protection rules.
The regulator has sent Google a letter in which they told Google that there will be a European-wide investigation of the policy. Google can expect some questions soon. (more…)
Google has added more concert information to the search results. When you search for a specific artist, information about upcoming concerts can be shown right under the official website of the artist you were looking for. Google only shows this information if an upcoming event will take place in your area, otherwise the information won’t appear.
In the screenshot below you can see the information directly below the Black Keys (an American rock band) website. The first concert will take place on Friday, May 4 in the Oracle Arena in Oakland. Below the location there are links to websites where you can find more information and buy tickets. By clicking the little ‘plus’ icon you can show more upcoming concerts in your area from, in this case the Black Keys. (more…)
Last year when Google introduced Google+ Pages Google also introduced badges. Badges can be easily generated and embedded on a website to show you are a member and to get people to ‘follow’ you. As a company this gives you a way to offer your visitors a quick way to let them add your page to their circles.
Until now the badge was only suited for companies and brands but now Google has made a new badge specifically for personal profiles. So if you have a personal website and, of course a Google+ profile, you can embed a badge now so that visitors of your website or blog can add you to their circles. (more…)
Last week I attended Search Engine Strategies London (Full coverage by other State of Search Bloggers here) so I wasn’t directly able to post about this but I think it was remarkable enough to do it now.
We’ve seen before that Google is pushing Google+ to new users by requiring them to sign up for the social network when signing up for a new Google account. Now spotted by Twitter user Robert Matei is a experiment where Google tries to push Google Wallet to new users. When registering for a new Google account Google will ask in the third and final step if you want to also sign up for or connect to Google Wallet. As you can see in the screenshot below you can enter your credit or debit card on the right but there is also an option to skip this step. (more…)
As you know Google recently made serveral changes to the interface. At first a revamped navigation was launched and rolled out last year but later Google decided to pull back the new interface. After giving it some thoughts earlier this month the company introduced a combination of the current black bar and the new interface launched in November last year. This new interface is here to stay (at least for now).
But where the new menu, which could be reached through the Google logo is not in the desktop versions of products anymore Google still tries to keep it, but then on the mobile version. In a new experiment a new interface was spotted for Google Mobile. In the screenshot you can see that the menu with links to several products is opened by hitting the Google logo. You can view more products by clicking the “More” link. (more…)
Google will soon slightly change the way the current +1 button works. Since last year August you can share pages on Google+ via the button embedded on a website.
Ever since this was added you have to click on the button first to give the +1 after which you have to click again in to the share box to be able to share the post with your own circles on Google+. This is of course a unnecessary extra click to share a page and Google realized this to. Therefore the behavior of the button will be changed on short notice which means that you only have to click once to share an article.
After clicking the button a popup will appear immediately next or above the button where you can select the right circles and add a optional description. This way the button functions more like the buttons from Twitter and Facebook but you will always have the last step to select circles before you can share. Since we are part of a test group you can already see how this works on our site, just check the +1 button above (and compare that with other sites for example).
Currently the change is only available for people who signed up for this Google+ Platform Preview but the change will be live to all users soon.
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