Recent Changes at Google, Yahoo, and MSNFind out about the exciting changes taking place in the top 3 major search engines. |  | Visited: 944 |
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| | by Kim Roach
September 08, 2006 |
There are many changes taking place in the top search engines. Google,
Yahoo, and MSN are all adapting to the many transformations occuring
within the search industry. Because of these changes, I thought I would
take the time to give you an overview of what's taking place within the
market and how it affects you as a webmaster. To begin, let's start
with Google.
Back in 2003, Google would index and crawl the web about once a month
and everything would change all in one shot. WebMasterWorld would
actually name these updates with names like Brandy, Florida, and
Bourbon.
Google has moved away from these monthly updates to an ever- changing
process. You can now see daily changes within the SERPS with the
biggest changes occuring during algorithm updates.
Late June and July of this year saw some major changes within the
Google algorithm. If your site was hurt from this algorithm change, you
should re-examine your site and be sure to follow the guidelines below:
1. Pursue a continuous linking campaign with other quality sites. This
can be achieved through article syndication, exchanging RSS feeds,
submitting to directories or syndicating a press release.
2. Create a Google sitemap to increase the coverage of your webpages.
3. Make sure your site has a clear navigation system. Every page should be reachable from at least one static link.
4. Avoid all deceptive or manipulative behavior. Don't get involved in
linking schemes. Avoid all forms of cloaking and avoid hidden text or
hidden links.
Besides the changes taking place within organic search results, there
have also been recent changes within Google Adwords. In July of 2006,
Google updated their landing page algorithm. These changes have harmed
a number of online marketers. Many advertisers who had been paying five
or ten cents a click are now required to bid at least 50 cents to a
dolloar or more. There are also other advertisers who kept their bid
prices, but those bids are now buying only 3rd or 4th page positions
when they used to buy first page positions.
Some advertisers have even been effectively shutdown.
However, keep in mind that not all advertisers have been affected.
There are four main types of sites that have been hit the hardest.
These include:
one page sales letter websites
squeeze pages
adsense sites (particularly those involved in Adsense arbitrage)
affiliate sites
The new landing page algorithm gives a quality score to every landing
page. Fortunately for us, Google has left some clues as to how they are
ranking these pages.
Below are 3 general guidelines that will help those who have been hurt by the recent updates.
1. Provide relevant and substantial content.
2. Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and
accurate information related to the product or service in your ad.
3. Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site's content.
To stay in accordance with the new quality score guidelines, you may
want to remove all Adsense ads from your landing pages, create or find
more original content for your sites, ensure that your landing page has
at least 500 words, and check to make sure that your ad relates
perfectly with the content of your landing page.
Google is getting smarter everyday. Our job is not to trick the search
engines but to deliver truly valuable information to our visitors. By
doing this along with some basic on-page and off-page optimization
techniques, you should perform very well in the search engines over the
long-haul.
There have also been some recent changes at MSN.
They have changed the name of their search engine spiders. Before the
changes, they were all called "msnbot,". Fortunately, they are now
starting to group their spiders into separate categories.
The MSN Shopping bot is msnbot-products.
The MSN News bot is msnbot-news.
The MSN Image Search bot is msnbot-media.
The MSN search bot is still called msnbot.
It should now be much easier for webmasters to decipher what's really
going on in their web logs. In addition, webmasters can also block
specific bots if they need to, without blocking MSN Search.
Last, but not least, there is Yahoo. This company has experienced some very exciting changes within the past few months.
One of these is the launch of a new Yahoo Search Crawler. The new
crawler is faster and more efficient at visiting websites. As a result,
website owners should notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number
of requests and bandwidth consumed by the Yahoo crawler.
Yahoo also released an index update in mid-July. You can read all about it at http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000327.html.
In addition, there are a number of other, smaller-based search engines
who are leading the way in the future of search engine technology. One
of the best examples I have seen is Eurekster.com.
They have developed a social search engine powered by the wisdom of crowds.
Eurekster makes use of its own SearchMemory technology, which remembers
the sites a user finds useful and presents them higher in the results
the next time they search. Then, Eurekster lets a user share their
searches and sites with friends. For example, if you do a search on
"internet marketing", you'll see sites related to "internet marketing"
that your friends also found useful. These results are marked with an
icon.
This personalization helps to increase relevancy in a way that no algorithm can match.
I expect to see many changes within Google, Yahoo, and MSN in upcoming
years as they merge search engine technology with social search in
order to make search results more relevant as well as personalized. One
thing is clear, the future evolution of search is sure to be exciting
to watch.
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Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the 
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