Monthly Archives: May 2010

Every so often Google updates their algorithm for their massively popular search engine. When they perform such updates, many site owners brace themselves for the worst. After all, Google updates have names just like Florida hurricanes do. In fact , the Google search engine update of 2003 is known as the “Florida Update.” This update alone put businesses out of business in a day.

This time around, Google has been kinder to web masters and website owners by giving them a preview of what’s to come next. They are not just trying to be kind to web masters, but to web searchers too. After all, without the web searchers, they have no business and if web searchers are not happy with search results, they will head off to Bing or Yahoo. Now, that is what Google does not want.

By allowing web masters a sneak peek into Google Caffeine, Google was able to get input from web masters as to what they thought about Caffeine as well as help them iron out any programming bugs. It does seem a bit odd that web masters and Google could get along so well albeit for a brief time.

The main reason the Google updated their search engine is because they want to stay ahead in the search engine game. Google has no plans of being nice in the war for search users. After all, they are a publicly traded company, and they have shareholders to answer to.

Now in defense of Google, a search engine’s job is only getting harder and harder as more and more web pages are being published all over the world in multiple languages everyday. So as you can imagine, speed is of the essence. Thus, Google has appropriately named their latest search engine incarnation, Google Caffeine. It’s the fastest search engine to date.

For those just starting out in the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the topic can be a bit intimidating. After all, the Google algorithm is comprised of about 200 different ranking factors with some carrying more weight than others. Also, we have all heard the horror stories of:

1. Google de-indexing sites
2. Nasty Google updates that can put you out of business in a day
3. Google slaps that leave you dizzy
4. Google site wide penalties that drop your site in incremented values.
5. And lastly, the dreaded Google sandbox

Now you will notice up until now, all the talk is about Google and that is for a very good reason. Google is the 2 ton elephant, or gorilla if you prefer, in the Search Engine game. Depending on what reports that you read, Google handles anywhere to 75% to 80% of all search queries online.

Google and Microsoft’s Bing have recently joined forces. They each had glaring weaknesses. Hopefully together, they can build a better mouse trap or better yet, a better search engine.

The good thing about SEO is that if you grasp the basics, they will serve you very well no matter how the search engines tweek their algorithms. The days of spamming the esearch engines and creating low quality sites are coming to an end thankfully. To put it simply, a whole team of Google engineers is a whole lot smarter than most of us. On the brighter side of things, the search engines do tell you what is important to them and their customers, the searchers.