In case you missed it, Google officially announced that the long awaited Google Caffeine is now here. And rather than calling it an update to their search algorithm, they are calling it their ‘new web indexing system.’ Caffeine had been live on a few data centers since the beginning of the year, but now it is used for all search results that Google delivers. So what does this mean for you?

As a searcher it means that the results you receive from Google should be delivered quicker, and they should be more relevant to your search query. Very good things.

As a website owner, (more…)

Late last week Google announced that they were including an additional signal in their search ranking algorithm. That new signal has been identified as Site Speed.  Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. The faster, the better. We live in an age of instant gratification so it really is not a surprise that this be included in Google’s algorithm. (more…)

For a month or two, there has been a new addition to the search engine results pages (SERP’s). This addition is the inclusion of breadcrumbs.

Let’s start with an explanation of what breadcrumbs are. Breadcrumbs are a form of navigation that shows the users path that got them to their current location. It allows for a user to easily return to the page they just left if they landed somewhere they didn’t want to. In addition to being very useful for the user, it turns out it is also very search engine friendly! (more…)

As promised, Google is starting to roll out “Real-Time” Search from sources like Twitter, News articles, fresh web pages, Yahoo Answers, etc… and is integrating them into their search results (Facebook and MySpace will soon be joining as Google has inked deals with both). Results will be displayed at the top of Page 1 in a block titled, “Latest Results from keyword phrase“.

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Back in 2007, Google announced that they were introducing personalized search results to anyone signed into their Google Account. So for Gmail, Adwords, Analytics, Adsense users and for ALL of the other Google products… as long as you remained signed in to your account, your Google search results conformed to your past search history.

At the time, I remember wondering (worrying) what chaos this would bring to the SEO world if that personalization were at everyone’s fingertips… if any given search phrase resulted in a slightly different position based on individuals’ search history.  I pictured clients calling me up complaining that they did a search at home and were #2 and now that they’re at work they’ve suddenly dropped to #8… Oh, and by the way, they called to verify with a buddy and he couldn’t find them at all. Well, Google was pretty serious about these personalized results. I didn’t realize how serious until they extended Personalized Search to everyone! (more…)