On Wednesday, February 23, 2011, a category 5 hurricane named “Panda” swept through the Gulf of Google devastating businesses large and small alike. The hurricane was reportedly named after one of Google’s engineers.

So what was the reason for this catastrophic and “game-changing” update? Well, according to Google:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites – sites which are low-value, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites – sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. It is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.” (Source: Google Blog)

Mission accomplished. Anyway, in the aftermath of the Panda update, there are 11 important SEO facts I’ve learned based on my own personal experiences, the experiences of my clients, and from listening to top SEO professionals across the Internet.

The above passages are from an article I wrote last July titled, Google Panda Update: 11 Important SEO Facts You Should Know.

In item #7 of the 11 SEO facts I wrote:

7. Avoid Excessive Advertisements or Images

“Be mindful of having too many advertisements on any of your pages, in relation to “meaningful” content. There seems to be a direct correlation between the number of advertisements on a page (especially above the fold advertising), and the overall ranking of a page. Make sure you have plenty of quality, relevant content to balance out your web pages.”

Well, now it’s official. On January 19, 2012, Google announced that it will penalize sites with pages that are top-heavy with ads.

The change – called the “page layout algorithm” – takes direct aim at any site with pages where content is buried under tons of ads.

>From Google’s post on its Inside Search blog today:

“We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.

So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience.

Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”

Google also posted the same information to its Google Webmaster Central blog.

Sites using pop-ups, pop-unders or overlay ads are not impacted by this. It only applies to static ads in fixed positions on pages themselves. (Source: SearchEngineLand.com)

Google’s Hypocrisy

Danny Sullivan (SearchEngineLand.com) said on the same day that Google’s web search team announced this change, he receíved a message from Google’s AdSense team encouraging him to put more ads on his site.

Can you believe that?

Think about the hypocrisy for a moment. When you perform a search on Google, the first thing you see when they return your search results are above-the-fold ads. But yet, they want to penalize you for the above-the-fold ads on your site.

That’s typical Google…Do what we say, not what we do. Hey, Google! What about our user experience when we do a search?

Quality Content Matters

So what does all of this mean? It means play by the rules or suffer the consequences. It also means the content on your website matters more than ever before. Not to be redundant, but I have to go back to what Google said when explaining Panda:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites-sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites-sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. It is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

So what constitutes high-quality content?

Like everything else in life, when it comes to quality, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, what constitutes quality to one person, might not necessarily be quality to the next person. You know the old saying…

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

What does that mean? It simply means, what is useless to one person might be valuable to another.

For example, my idea of “quality” content is to write useful “how-to” articles, (minimum 800 words) or blog posts that explain how to market your website better. I strive to create the type of content that not only helps people – but also content that other quality websites will want to link to and share with their visitors. My experience and results has taught me this standard satisfies Google.

About The Author
David Jackson is a marketing consultant, and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! free-marketing-tips-blog.com

While great content will always get you noticed, I have come to the somewhat obvious conclusion that “Content is NOT King, Google is King” on the web. This is a slightly different mindset when it comes to getting traffic and marketing on the net.

This new mindset doesn’t change the fact that you still have to create great content, but it changes the way one goes about promoting that content on the web.

In the last few years, Google’s share of the search market has grown to 65% or much more in most areas of the world. This domination of online search puts Google in control of what content is seen – regardless of its quality.

It plays a major role in your content’s visibility, a role so great that without Google’s approval, your content is not exactly dead in the water, but your chances of succeeding is much less than with a thumbs-up from Google.

Now, the real turning point (light bulb moment) for me was Google’s recent promotion of its own products or data, as in the whole “Google Plus Your World” search results features which were introduced a few weeks ago. Google is actively showing and promoting its Google+ profiles and posts within its SERPs.

Many believe Google is sacrificing both relevancy and quality by only showing its own data (as opposed to Twitter’s and Facebook’s profiles/posts which Google claims it no longer has access to) when Google users are logged into their accounts.

Those same critics also believe Google has stepped over the line and has become too self-promotional in the way it is now handling search. These critics say Google is promoting its other products such as YouTube, Blogger… over other outside entries in their search results.

Regardless of your view on this matter, there’s no denying Google has become much more pro-active in promoting its products. You can now see ads on TV and elsewhere for Google Chrome, Android, Adwords… all promoting Google’s products.

Why is all this important?

Many believe, myself included, that Google is aiming for control of all aspects of the web – not only search, but video and social as well. They want to control what web users search, see and how they socialize on the net. Google wants to be in the driver’s seat – plain and simple.

But Google’s influence will go much further than those three areas; Google probably would also like to control the browser (Chrome) we use, the operating system (Android) and the device (Chromebook) we view those results on. Only Microsoft comes close to doing the same thing, but they have really not presented a search engine which can beat Google and fall short in this respect.

This leaves Google in the Captain’s chair. It now controls what content on the web is seen and viewed. While this control is not complete, it is growing stronger month by month, year by year.

What is extremely troubling and a little hard to understand, Google is now JUDGING your WHOLE site instead of just the webpage/content in question. This new attitude is reflected in the recent Panda Series of updates which was supposedly aimed at removing duplicate and low quality content from the web.

However, if a webmaster or site triggers just one of Google’s new rules… their whole site is lowered in the rankings, including their perfectly good high quality content. It is like saying you can’t have visitors into your house, because you have an untidy attic. Your visitors won’t ever see the attic, but Google as Gatekeeper of the web, with the Panda Updates and other restrictions, makes sure your rightful visitors don’t even make it to the door.

This absurd, arbitrary ruling by Google is extremely hard to understand by small web site owners and businesses who don’t have the resources/manpower to re-design their sites at a drop of a hat. Whatever happened to Google’s motto of “Don’t be evil” or “Do no evil” when it comes to judging and penalizing WHOLE websites, instead of the pages in question. Many webmasters would be satisfied with “Don’t be cruel” when Google is ranking their sites.

Likewise, Google is rolling out another rule which states webmasters can’t have too many ads “above the fold” or their whole site will be penalized, not just the offending page in question. Ironically, at the same time, Google is actively telling webmasters to place Adsense above the fold… but they have no problem with placing their own ads above the fold.

What does this all mean?

To put it bluntly, you must make sure your content passes ALL of Google’s hurdles if you truly want it to succeed on the web. The long series of Panda Updates really pointed this out to many webmasters who failed to jump a few hurdles and saw their rankings drop from sight in Google.

To put it even more bluntly, webmasters and marketers must please Google if they want their content to have the best results. While quality content is still important, without Google’s approval your great content will go nowhere fast.

In addition, webmasters and marketers must optimize their content not only for Google search, but also for other Google products such as Google+, YouTube… and they must make sure their content displays properly in the Chrome browser because Google is taking data from these users to rank your content.

Quality content is no longer king of the web, Google is king of the web and you better play by Google’s rules or you might as well take your ball and go home.

About The Author
All views, opinions and conclusions are solely those of the author, who is a full-time search engine marketer. He runs numerous niche sites, including two sites on Internet Marketing. To get valuable marketing tips for free clíck here: internet marketing tools or here: web marketing tools. Titus Hoskins Copyright 2012.

Google is the world’s most popular search engine. Shortly after its creation, Google’s popularity skyrocketed and it soon became the dominant search engine for finding information on the internet. This is why, if you own a website, you want it to be high in the Google ratings.

Google is constantly changing and evolving so you need to keep up with the changes. Their recent changes, called the Panda Update, caused many sites’ rankings to drop significantly. Google’s mission is to provide the highest quality information for each search done and in doing this, many sites get lost in the endless pages of search results.

To get your website better ranking there are many things you can do and many things you should not do. I have tried to list some of the more effective things you should do and a couple things you should not do for better placement in Google.

1. Limit Your Advertising – If you have a hodgepodge or cluttering of advertising on your site, this can decrease your ranking. Google considers excess advertising to be a sign of a low-quality spam site. And remember, Google’s goal is to provide the highest quality sites at the top of the search results.

2. Google Toolbar – The Google Toolbar is an important tool to have because of all the features that will help you improve your ranking. The Google toolbar can help you monitor your page rank, help you find sites to link to and help you find which sites are linked to you. You can also keep tabs on how your site is doing with targeted keywords. Get it for free at Google.com.

3. Relevant and Quality Content - One of the most important things to do for better SEO is to provide quality content with relevant keywords. Quality is always more effective than quantity so don’t plaster a ton of low-quality articles on your site just to have content. Make sure the articles you choose are relevant to your site and provide helpful information. If you have some of the same articles as another site, the most relevant quality site will be higher in the rankings so the duplicate content itself, will not lower your rankings. Also, be sure to add fresh new content on a regular basis.

4. Google+1 Button – By joining Google Plus and adding a Google+1 button to your site, you can help lift your site’s rankings. One of the things Google looks at the most is your site’s level of importance and relevancy. The more plus ones you can get, the more importance it will give your site, thus causing Google to boost your ranking in the search results pages. This will also get your site more exposure resulting in more visits as well.

5. Become a Blogger – If you haven’t already done so, you need to add a blog to your business website. Blogging is a highly efficient way to raise your ranking in Google because a blog does two things. First, it can add many pages of keyword-rich, relevant, quality content to your site which will be noticed by Google. The more quality pages indexed, the more chances you have to be on page one. And secondly, a blog can boost the amount of quality inbound links to your site.

6. Relevant Inbound Links - Quality inbound links are a great way to add relevance and importance to your site. Guest posting on high quality blogs is one of the best ways to accomplish this task. Commenting on existing blog comments works well also. Always use keyword rich posts with appropriate sites and use relevant keywords for your links. Google does not value links from article banks as much as they used to so choosing a few quality blogs is better than submitting to countless article sites.

7. Social Media - As with many facets of internet marketing, social media plays a big part in SEO. Be active on your social sites. Do not let them go stale. Engage in conversations, post new info regularly and involve your visitors.

8. Keyword Research - Keywords play an important part in SEO, but using the wrong keywords can do more harm than good. Be sure to research keywords to find what search phrases people are using to find your site’s info. Google offers a keyword tool called Google Keyword Tool. This free tool will give you a list of keywords and tell you how often they are used and their competition.

9. Hidden Text - Hidden text is text displayed on your site but invisible to your visitors. A common way of doing this is to set the font color the same as the background color. The reason for doing this is to add a large number of keywords for the search engines but not make your content seem redundant to your visitors. Do not do this. Google considers this manipulation and it could get your site penalized.

10. Bad Linking - Reciprocal linking, inbound links, and outgoing links can all be good if you follow the proper procedure. Do not link with any and all sites. Be very selective and only link with sites that are relevant to your site and contain quality content. Stay away from FFA (Free For All) or link farm sites. Check your links regularly to make sure they are not broken. Broken links will catch the attention of Google and other search engines. Linking to poor quality sites or spam sites is also something you do not want to do. Years ago quantity might have gotten you a boost but now it is all about quality links to relevant sites, NOT quantity.

Obtaining a high Google ranking is the goal of every webmaster. It can be done, but you need to be consistent, persistent and keep abreast of Google’s ever evolving search methods.

About The Author
Don’t be one of the 95% of people who fail at their online business. Terri Seymour can help you make monéy online. Find out how to increase your traffic and sales with her popular “How to Build Your Online Business” ebook for FREE at: ==> www.SeymourProducts.com

A couple of weeks ago, I visited one of the Internet Marketing/Small Business forums that I’m a member of, and noticed a new member had posted a typical newbie question in the SEO forum. The member wanted to know how she could be guaranteed to get her website on the first page of Google. As usual, members came crawling out of the woodwork with advice – including members who didn’t even own a website.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty typical on Internet Marketing/Small Business forums… members who don’t own a website instructing other members how to get on the first page of Google… members who don’t own a business dispensing business advice. So be careful where you get your advice from… but I digress.

Not surprisingly, not a single member responded with the correct answer. And what is the correct answer? The correct answer is there is NO magic bullet that will assure a first page ranking on Google. Nevér has been, nevér will be. By the same token, NO reputable SEO company will promise first page rankings.

By the way, this isn’t the first time I’ve written about this topic. In my article How to Choose a Reputable SEO Company I wrote the following:

“No SEO company can guarantee you a first page or top 10 ranking. I repeat: NO SEO company can guarantee you a first page or top 10 ranking. Here’s why: There are far too many variables involved in the ranking of a website – not the least of which are the age of the domain, relevancy and quantity of content, number and quality of inbound links, competition, and of course Google’s ever-changing algorithms. That’s why legitimate SEO companies don’t make those kinds of outlandish promises.”

Why Reputable SEO Companies Don’t Promise Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings

In other words, it’s impossible to promise something which you have no control over. But don’t take my word for it… this is what Google itself has to say about the matter:

“Beware of SEO’s that claim to guarantee rankings.” (Source: Google Webmaster Tools)

Wow…that statement is about as succinct as it gets.

In his article, Why Reputable SEO Firms Don’t Promise Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings, prominent SEO expert, Rand Fishkin writes:

“From 1996 through to today, SEO scams have used ‘guaranteed rankings and traffic’ as a slimy catchphrase to lure in gullible buyers with too-good-to-be-true promises. That association has stained the entire industry. SEO’s cannot control the search results the way FedEx can control shipping packages or Coca Cola can guarantee the taste of their beverage. The search engines alone are responsible for, and privy to the rankings’ methodologies.

There are times when I would be willing to gamble a large amount of money on the fact that we could achieve a certain ranking for a given keyword. However, that’s not the same as a guarantee. A guarantee is a promise – a basic contract that necessarily creates an assumption of certainty by the deliverer to the recipient. Anytime you cheat on that logic and make a promise outside your sphere of direct control, you’re walking on shaky ethical and business ground.”

Now think about that for a minute. If one of the most reputable and prominent SEO experts on the planet isn’t willing to guarantee rankings, what does that tell you about the validity of guaranteed search rankings claims?

Are There Any Exceptions?

Yes, there are always exceptions. For example, Dental SEO, The Visible Dentist is one of those companies that guarantees first page rankings. Their guarantee states:

“The dentist does not pay for SEO services until their website is favorably positioned in a major search engine. Major search engines include Google, Yahoo, MSN’s Bing and Ask. Our exclusive promise specifically guarantees that the client’s dental website will have high visibility in one or more of these popular search engines. Further, a minimum of twenty (20) positions on Google’s 1st page results will be attained before payment is required.

This warranty is made without absolute assurances to search engine positioning. The reason positions cannot be absolutely guaranteed is because no one has control of a search engine’s algorithms, nor control over the many websites coming online every day. However, all work on the client’s site will be performed according to specs and to the best of our ability. If desired ranking is not achieved, no payment will be due from the client.”

Personally, I don’t have a problem with that type of promise. The company is basically putting their money where their mouth is. They’re willing to prove their competency and assure results before the client pays a dime. This eliminates any and all risk for the client. If more SEO companies did business that way, the industry as a whole wouldn’t have such a bad reputation.

All that being said, even if no money is required upfront, you still need to do your due diligence and check things out carefully.

SEO Scam Artists

If all SEO companies competently applied their craft and performed the service they were paid to perform, articles like this one wouldn’t be necessary. But as long as there are incompetent SEO scam artists who intentionally take people’s hard-earned money without doing what they promised… I will continue to warn people about the problem.

Unscrupulous SEO companies that promise first page rankings aren’t stupid, but they think you are. In fact, they’re counting on your naivety, gullibility and yes… laziness. Because the truth of the matter is there are millions of people out there who would much rather put their faith and trust in leprechauns, magic pills and guaranteed rankings, than put in the time and hard work necessary to achieve the desired results. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s always been – even before the advent of the Internet.

The Power OF A Strong Guarantee

Like I said, the SEO companies making guaranteed ranking claims aren’t stupid. In addition to counting on your naivety, gullibility and laziness, they’re also pretty astute marketers – well aware of the power of a strong “guarantee.” Like all smart marketers, they read books and articles about ways to boost their sales – like this article by copywriting expert Dean Rieck:

About The Author
David Jackson is a marketing consultant, and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! free-marketing-tips-blog.com

Today, Google announced social search features with a mouthful of a name: Search Plus Your World.

We’ve been hearing rumblings around the Valley that Google was working on big new features to integrate Google+ with search results and this has been an obvious evolution for the search engine ever since they released their new social network.

This new set of features will include posts, videos, links, photos and more from your friends on Google+. It is not yet rolled out to everyone but will be made available to those signed into Google+ in the United States over the next few days.

Impact on SEO

This is part of Google’s effort to dramatically change how search works, placing an increasing importance on signals from its own social network, Google+. With 50 million users recently attained, this is a not insignificant source of data and their growth curve has been insane.

Speculation in the SEO community as well as in back channels all point to Google+ being a big part of Google’s plans for affecting how SEO works. The impact on SEO through Facebook and Twitter has already been felt quite strongly over the last two years and Google has obviously been paying attention.

Here’s what I think will be relevant for startups and marketers over the next twelve months:

Having More Pluses Will Increase Search Rankings

Take a look at almost any blog post with Plus, Facebook and Twitter buttons. Twitter and Facebook, by far, will have far more activity than the Google+ buttons. That overall inbalance probably won’t change in the next year although we will see a change in the ratio as Google+ begins to narrow the gap.

Now is the time to start building your audience on Google+ (this is our homework assignment as well), learn how the network works and begin to form meaningful connections with people who share your interests.

Links Will Still Be Important but Slightly Less So

Links, for the last decade, have dominated the collective mindshare of SEO community as the primary way to influence search rankings in your favor. We’re going to see an increased weight being placed on social signals, with perhaps slight preference towards Google+ numbers. From a search engine’s perspective, the rich data set to be found in the social graphs provided by Facebook and Google+ are irresistible indicators of quality and relevance.

What this means is that links will have a slightly less overall impact on your search performance than before. It’s still, in my opinion, going to be the primary signal for quality and relevance if only because they have a more permanent feel than most social signals, but the balance is shifting slightly.

My best recommendation here is to continue doing what you’re doing with link building, but to also ensure that your content is well optimized for distribution on Facebook, Twitter, and now, Google+.

Search Patterns Will Start to Change

Even with today’s release and Google+’s 50 million users, I don’t think Google has enough social content through their own network to significantly affect search patterns across all types of queries, but certain categories of queries may start to see changes. If you look at the types of posts that gain the most popularity on social networks, it’s those that have the most opportunity for interaction: photos, videos, links, longer posts.

These sorts of posts, from a purely search monetization standpoint, fit in well with travel and some ecommerce related queries. As this change begins to take hold, the way people search for travel destinations and products online could change to make more use of their own network’s recommendations.

Social signals (and the people behind them) are Viewed as More Trustworthy

At the current time, it is much easier to game the link graph (people have been practicing for the last ten years and there has been financial incentive) than it has been to game the social graph. For this reason, even though the overall weight and permanence on individual posts may still have less value when compared with a link, the people behind the social shares have their entire reputation and persona to back them up. This is the closest thing we will have to domain authority in the old SEO world but it’s long term impact is far more significant.

At the end of the day, spammers will figure out relatively effective ways of gaming the social graph at large scale, but we’re still in virgin territory and Google has many more options for determining authenticity with this data set than they ever did with links.

The Quality and Regularity of Your Content Will Still Matter Most

As a startup ourselves, we care most about what we can learn from this to better reach our audience and provide useful content to them. It’s clear on Twitter and Facebook that posting high quality, unique content regularly and often is the single best strategy for achieving that goal. That hasn’t changed, on the contrary it is more true now than ever before.

About the Author:
Ray Grieselhuber is CEO of GinzaMetrics, an enterprise level SEO platform based in Mountain View, CA. GinzaMetrics is a 2010 Y-combinator graduate company and backed by several individual investors as well as 500 Startups and Venture51.

Good or bad, it makes Google+ even more relevant to search visibility

Google just announced some new elements it is bringing to Google Search: personal results, profiles in search, and people and pages. They’re billing the changes collectively as “Search, Plus Your World”.

Now, Google has been doing personalized search to some extent for quite a while. Likewise, profiles have appeared in search results for quite some time. The new features are different in that the personal results will let users find info specifically for them. This may include Google+ photos and posts of their own and things that have been shared with them. Profiles will appear in both autocomplete and results. The “people and pages” feature comes in to enable users to find people profiles and Google+ pages related to topic areas of interest, and make it easy for users to follow these people.

“Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more,” says Google Fellow Amit Singhal. “But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.”

“As a child, my favorite fruit was Chikoo, which is exceptionally sweet and tasty,” says Singhal, sharing an example of where the new features may prove useful. “A few years back when getting a family dog, we decided to name our sweet little puppy after my favorite fruit. Over the years we have privately shared many pictures of Chikoo (our dog) with our family. To me, the query [chikoo] means two very sweet and different things, and today’s improvements give me the magical experience of finding both the Chikoos I love, right in the results page.”

Google+ Clearly Now More Important To Search

In terms of Profiles appearing in search, Google is demonstrating why it can pay off in search visibility to be active on Google+ and develop a substantial following. Before it was clear that this was beneficial, but now, you can see directly where this will help you. Not only will Google show people you are friends with, but it will show people it thinks you would be interested in.

Google says it will show autocomplete predictions for “various prominent people from Google+, such as high-quality authors from our authorship pilot program”.

Clearly, this is also another reason to use authorship markup.

People can click on these results and easily add the person to their circles on Google+.

It doesn’t look like brand pages will be showing up as autocomplete predictions. When asked about this, a Google spokesperson told WebProNews, “For profiles in search, you will see an autocomplete prediction for people who have Google+ profiles. These are people you’re connected to or popular people related to the query. For Google+ Pages, there’s Direct Connect (launched back in Nov).”

More on Direct Connect here.

About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter.

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Senators Call For FTC Antitrust Probe of Google, FairSearch responds

Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee have put together a letter calling for an FTC investigation of Google, with an emphasis on the company’s search results.

Note that the letter refers to Bing as “a partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo”. And that this is the only competition Google has. I’m not sure this is an accurate portrayal of the search industry. Bing is not a partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo. It’s Microsoft’s search engine. They are separate. Sure, they do have a partnership, and Bing powers the back-end of Yahoo, but they are still two different search engines. Granted, they are sharing an advertising platform now. Furthermore, there are other search engines out there, though their market share isn’t nearly as great.

Newer kinds of search engines have popped up in recent memory. Blekko and DuckDuckGo spring immediately to mind. Just because people aren’t using them as much as Google, doesn’t mean they aren’t free to compete. They aren’t being used nearly as much as Bing either. Bing has proven that marketing a search engine and making strategic partnerships can go a long way in gaining market share in the search industry.

The reality of the Internet and the search industry is much broader than competition among search engines. The fact is that people are obtaining information in a lot more ways now. They’re relying on search less for some of that. They’re turning to social media and different apps. A lot of iPhone users may be turning to Siri now. That’s just an example. Smartphones and tablets have opened up the world to a whole new world of apps for consuming information online. That itself could be just as big of an obstacle for Bing as anything.

For that matter, it could be a benefit for Bing if they play their cards right. If people have to rely on the traditional search engine less for some types of information consumption, perhaps there are opportunities for Microsoft to innovate more in the app world. I do believe the direction they’re going with Xbox and Kinect can have some pretty big ramifications. I wonder what a Bing-infused Xbox mobile device could accomplish for their share of the search market. Getting Xbox Live features on mobile devices is a start, but what about something more like what Sony is doing with the Playstation Vita, only Xbox style, taking advantage of the new Xbox platform.

A representative for the FairSearch Coalition sent us these comments on the letter from Rick Rule, head of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division from 1985-1989, a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, and outside counsel to Microsoft:

Senator Lee is right to call for careful scrutiny of Google, given the numerous allegations of antitrust violations by the company. The antitrust laws of this country prohibit companies like Google that dominate important parts of our economy from using their market power to destroy competition and to deny consumers of choice. Decisions from conservative courts make clear that the antitrust laws apply just as much to the new economy as to the old. If a company like Google is allowed to flout the rule of law, then free-market competition will suffer.

Senator Lee’s letter to the FTC shows that the Senator understands that promoting sound antitrust law enforcement is an important bulwark against the inevitable calls for regulation. Senator Lee’s letter is in line with the views of conservative judges and free-market heroes, like Judge Bork and Judge Posner.

I too am a conservative who believes in the supremacy of free markets. I worked for President Reagan as the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division. We understood then, as Senator Lee understands today, that in order for free-market competition to work, consumers and producers must be able to respond to the market’s “invisible hand” free from artificial restraints imposed by government, by cartels, or by monopolists like Google. The troubling allegations that Google uses its market power to impose such restraints are too numerous to ignore. As Senator Lee’s letter demonstrates, conservative principles demand that Google be held accountable to the rule of law.

They also sent us these comments from Mark Corallo, former Press Secretary and then Public Affairs Director for the U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General John Ashcroft (2002-2005). He’s currently a spokesman for FairSearch:

Senators Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Mike Lee (R-UT) sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz requesting that the FTC conduct an investigation into Google’s business practices. They should be applauded. The rule of law is non-partisan. And that is all they are requesting of the FTC – make sure that Google is following the law.

Considering the grilling they gave Google CEO Eric Schmidt at Senate hearing back in September, the news is not that these two Senators have concerns relating to Google’s leveraging its market dominance in anti-competitive and potentially illegal ways. The news is that the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Antitrust Subcommittee put it in writing and asked for action. When two senators not only agree on an issue but are willing to do something about it, the seismic tremors can be felt from the halls of the FTC right on up to Google’s executive suites. And that’s nothing compared to the shockwave that Google’s multimillion dollar lobbying team is feeling from all sides – after all, they’re paid to cut off these types of legitimate inquiries.

About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter.

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Google really wants to know. So do we. Tell us.

Google uses Google+ probably more than anyone else out there (except for maybe Robert Scoble), and regardless of whether or not you have added it to your daily social networking routine, it continues to provide a great channel for getting to know Google better.

What should Google be doing in 2012 to make your job easier? Comment here.

That doesn’t just go for helping your search rankings (which it can), but it provides a direct line of communication with many, many Googlers. It’s a great place to get advice from Google, and to share feedback. And it’s not just empty feedback. They’re actively participating in meaningful conversations with users, and have shown that they are taking ideas into consideration (for example, see recent Gmail integration).

This week, Google Webmaster Trends analyst John Mueller posted the following in a Google+ update:

“Google has tried a lot of new things this year when it comes to webmaster support — such as the hangouts in a variety of languages. Which parts do you all think we should work on next year? How can we make it easier for you all to make awesome websites, which are easily findable in web-search?”

“More hangouts? videos? more documentation? more detailed examples?”

This seems like a good opportunity to not only to raise this question ourselves with our readers, but to spread the question further, because you can actually participate in this conversation and possibly have an impact on future Google offerings, which can in turn benefit your site in the long run, and after a crazy year of algorithm changes, I’m sure many of you are looking for any leg up possible.

Google has already been hosting a slew of webmaster hangouts on Google+, and if you haven’t been taking advantage of this, why not? You are getting free access to some advice right from the horse’s mouth.

If you read WebProNews regularly, you should also know that Google puts out a lot of webmaster videos, generally starring Matt Cutts. We cover them fairly frequently, because they’re generally full of helpful knowledge for webmasters. Even when they contain things you already knew, sometimes it helps to be reminded of certain things, or Cutts might present the topic in a slightly different light than you looked at it before. It’s a good idea to watch these videos.

Here are some of the responses Mueller has received to his question so far:

Thomas Morffew: More people like you John, that are real faces, and available to help.

Sandip Dedhia: I agree with +Thomas Morffew, more Googlers who are open to speak about issues which webmasters are facing. In post panda era most of the replies on webmaster forum are so generic that it is hard to make out what is the exact cause of penalty or search traffic drop.

I would suggest some case studies around those websites who managed to recover from different penalties, like the reasons of penalty and steps they took to recover from that penalty.

Ramon Somoza: Certainly some assistance for multilingual sites would a great help.

Lincoln Jaeger: There could be more direct interaction going on through the webmasters console, with regards to flagging up issues, for example.

Bret Sutherland: When will Google shopping/product search get staff who are open and responsive?

Do you agree with any of these commenters? Have other ideas?

About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter.

Twitter: @CCrum237 | StumbleUpon: Crum |
Google: +Chris Crum

It’s been an extremely busy year for the good folks at Google, not only did they roll out the game-changing Panda Updates, but now they have increased the stakes by implementing Google Fresh. This recent algorithm update is based on the Caffeine architecture introduced by Google a year ago and supposedly makes Google’s listings much fresher.

On the Official Google Blog where this new Update was announced, Amit Singhal states:

“We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.”

However, in an update, Singhal explains this measurement of 35% only applies to where at least one result was affected by the changes. In reality, this update only “noticeably” impacts 6 to 10% of searches.

“Update 11/7/11: To clarify, when we say this algorithm impacted 35% of searches, we mean at least one result on the page was affected, as opposed to when we’ve said noticeably impacted in the past, which means changes that are significant enough that an average user would notice. Using that same scale, this change noticeably impacts 6 – 10% of searches, depending on the language and domain you’re searching on.”

Regardless, Google Fresh will be influencing what sites/pages get listed in the top spots in Google. Already, these fresher listings are popping up for keyword searches where products or services are constantly changing or evolving such as in consumer electronics.

How Should Webmasters React to Google Fresh?

For the average webmaster or business site owner, this Update will probably mean they will have to examine how often their content is updated. Adding new fresh content has definitely become more important to your site and to your overall marketing strategy.

However, for the small business owner with limited resources, constantly adding new content is not really feasible. These small sites won’t be able to compete with major websites which have hundreds of writers or content contributors. Keeping up will simply be too costly or too time consuming for many small business site owners.

Create Blogs and Forums

Hiring someone or outsourcing your content creation is one option, but in many cases this content is not of the highest quality, which sort of defeats the whole intention. Many SEO experts are already suggesting one way to keep offering up fresh quality content is to run a blog and/or a forum on your site.

Blogs are excellent sources of fresh content and with their RSS feeds broadcasting your news means it is fast and immediate. Blogs are also very search engine friendly so tagging and indexing your content is already built-in and ready to go. They also create a Timestamp with your content so that it can be easily dated and assessed by the search engines.

Having a membership forum or site, where members contribute fresh content, is another viable option for web owners. Appointing moderators to oversee this content is probably a good idea to ensure quality standards and to cut down on spam.

Create Active Online Communities

Along those same lines, another good idea is to create an active online community around your blog, site or any one of the social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or perhaps Google+. Announcing fresh content to these communities, especially if they are large and active, will get your content noticed by Google.

These social networks are designed to quickly pass fresh news or information along to all concerned and can be a great way to get your message out quickly and easily. Google+ has now opened up their service to accept brands, so you can have an account for your site or business.

Create a Current Sitemap

Any webmaster, no matter how small their site, can create a simple XML Sitemap of their site and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. Make sure when you create any new content or pages, the new URLs are placed on your sitemap. This can be done manually or you can set up a server-side application or program which does this automatically. If you want help creating a sitemap try here:

Google Sitemaps Explained.

Do Press Releases

With the introduction of Google Fresh, having your site or business regularly do press releases is a given. These releases are immediately picked up by Google and indexed. These releases can also be very SEO friendly so you can optimize them for your site’s targeted keywords. Places like PRWeb are extremely professional but they are expensive. There are also free press releases sites or services which you can use to get your fresh content out there.

Don’t Forget Google News Sites

You may or may not be aware that Google keeps a list of hand-picked news sites which they regularly crawl and index. These sites have passed Google’s standards and requirements, so they are excellent places to submit your content. Especially if you have a new site, getting Google to index and crawl your content will take some time, so placing your content and links on any of these Google News Sites may be worth the extra effort since it will help speed up the whole indexing process.

List of Google News Sites

Give Google What Google Wants

Finally, don’t forget to keep adding fresh quality content to your site on a regular basis. Regardless of your field, industry or subject matter, there is usually a constant flow of news associated with your topic, so placing a “news” section on your site may also help with Google Fresh. Time and time again, those sites and webmasters who give Google what Google wants, reap the biggest rewards.

About The Author
All views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, Titus Hoskins, who is a full time search engine marketer. He earns his living by ranking high in the search engines for lucrative keywords. His main site offers Free Guides on everything associated with running a business from Corporate Business Gifts to Online Fax Providers to Internet Marketing Tools.