Last week Google released some major changes to their search algorithms. The aim of this update was to push content farms and low quality content sites further down the list.
Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts wrote on the Google blog:
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.
Since that time we have noticed that our organic traffic from Google has nosedived. Crenk isnt a content farm and we aren’t a low quality content source!
Can someone at Google please get in touch and let us know why we are being heavily punished!
P.S. This seems to have changed our traffic numbers, but somehow the content scraper that is HuffingtonPost hasn’t lost any traffic at all.
Google has just updated their social search feature and here is what you can expect.
Google social search results will include published information from your friends, whether they’re publishing on YouTube, Flickr or their own blog or website.
Remember you only get social search results when you are logged in to your Google Account.
Google has been listening to the community and released a Chrome extension so that people can delete content farms they dont like from search results. If installed, the extension also sends blocked site information to Google, and we will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results.
Once a user blocks a site the results wont be seen in searches. Users can always revoke a blocked site at the bottom of the search results. You can also edit your list of blocked sites by clicking on the extension’s icon in the top right of the Chrome window.
This early test is available worldwide in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.
The average person can now influence Google’s search algorithm.
Blekko is the newest search engine on the block and they have decided to take a step ahead of Google and ban content farms. Blekko has banned the following sites from search results:
It will now be interesting to see if Google does the same. This may affect Demand Media’s recent IPO, in which the majority of their revenues come directly from Google.
Without a public notice Google has compiled a seemingly arbitrary list of keywords for which auto-complete is no longer available. Although the impact of this decision does not currently affect full search results, it does send out a strong signal that Google is willing to censor its services proactively, and to an extent that is far greater than many expected.
Among the list of forbidden keywords are “uTorrent”, a hugely popular piece of entirely legal software and “BitTorrent”, a file transfer protocol and the name of San Fransisco based company BitTorrent Inc. As of today, these keywords will no longer be suggested by Google when you type in the first letter, nor will they show up in Google Instant.
From scores.org comes a very well explained infographic about the raise and fall of Yahoo! From good all times where each Yahoo! share cost was U$S125 to the GeoCities deal which had a cost of U$S4 billion and then closed down.
Scores.org created a complete infographic representing the timeline for Google’s acquisitions in their short life. A simple way to see what they bought, when and in what product this acquisition transformed.
We should know by now that any of the largest companies in the world right now are in fact the most important ones because of their appetite and their capabilities to buy other companies. Google indeed took some great decisions in the last 10 years about this: YouTube, FeedBurner, Postini and Picasa are just a few of those.
Take a look to the complete list. Take note that this infographic divides the acquisition in time and type (technology, market and talent):
How many times did we wondered about “Thelma & Louise” ending? Thinking: “What if these girls could use a smartphone and Bing?”… None? Ok, me neither. But apparently Microsoft does.
If we think about one of the most dramatic endings in a movie, “Thelma & Louise” finale should be in the top 5. But fortunately Bing created a new ending, and while they were at it, they mentioned Google’s “inefficient” way to find places.
Take a look to this publicity from Microsoft’s Bing:
After I saw the car flying in the air, I thought this is a terrible way to use a movie reference; but after seeing the car didn’t get smashed I think the publicity is not horrible, just lame
Flock, the social browser, is not built on Chrome.
and browsing. Since then Flock, the social browser, has always been that fringe browser that a few people used but didn’t grab the audience it was hoping for. What did help Flock was the fact that it was built on the Firefox browser framework which made it easy to develop for since it was open source. The Flock browser allowed for many unique plug-ins very similar to Firefox, thus offering a seamless user interactive experience with the added bonus of social networking.
This week a huge announcement was made that Flock was leaving the Firefox backbone and moving to Chrome. Touted as a social browser there is definitely something to love about it, but does it really know where it wants to go? The interface has undergone a drastic overhaul moving away from the complex menus and tabs and moving more towards a simple interface with fully customizable group and friend options.
In a world where social platforms like Tweetdeck, Seesmic, and Hootsuite have been integrated into desktops and/or browsers, it feels like Flock is still running too many steps behind. Has Flock lost its luster? Perhaps, but there’s nothing wrong with reinventing yourself.
Google released recently, in beta, https://www.google.com/ which is of course the secure website using SSL for Google Search.
So, what is SSL? Secure Sockets Layer represents a secure protocol which provides us secure connections in a public network, like the Internet. This protocol uses cryptographic communications to guarantee privacy and authentication between client and server; basically using this type of connection, when you are connecting to a SSL site the protocol is confirming you that the answering server is who he say he is.
Sites without SSL could be victims of eavesdropping (someone else is looking the information you are using) and phishing (the server is not who says he is). That is way all of the web mails available, shopping sites, etc, use SSL sites for client’s connections.
Google only offered us SSL connections for Gmail and Google Docs; and I guess with this new experiment they are extending us the way to avoid any possibility for someone realizes we are actually searching for porn most of the time
Without a public notice Google has compiled a seemingly arbitrary list of keywords for which auto-complete is no longer available. Although the impact of this decision does not currently affect full search results, it does send out a strong signal that Google is willing to censor its services proactively, and to an extent that is far greater than many expected.
