Orlando SEO, Web Design & Online Marketing

I remember when I first switched over to Google as my search engine of choice. This was in the early 2000s. I had regularly used Yahoo to that point, but I would often find myself having to run different queries in order to get what I was after. Basically, they were not delivering the results that I was looking for.  Thus, began my dabbling with other search engines of the day.

What I loved about Google (and still do) is that they more often understood my intent the first time around when I searched, and I also liked their no nonsense interface that was not all cluttered with ads and news items. The accuracy of their search results outperformed the other search engines and this is what has kept me and many others hooked on Google to this day.

With Google Caffeine, Google has taken a step further in understanding a searcher’s intent by delivering what is known as blended results. Blended search results are nothing new, but now Google has perfected them a bit more. With the new Google SERP, you can now be shown images, news, twitter posts, Google Products, videos and related searches based on your query. Google is also more quickly sifting through the value of Social Media sites by delivering the most relevant sites higher in their SERPS for a given topic.

Google is not just providing their search results faster. They are also providing relevant results faster for your search. This helps Google keep the Lion’s share of  the searches performed by end users.

Google knows human behavior quite well. Maybe they know us even better than they care to admit. One thing that is certain, when it comes to search behavior, is that we want our results relevant and fast. That is why Google has focused on delivering their results even faster than before. The Google search engine has always been quick, but now it’s faster than ever. Many tests that we have recently been run on the beta version of Caffeine have shown that search results are being delivered at an average of twice as fast, when compared to the last version of Google search enigine.

You can tell how fast Google is delivering search results, because they publish the speed at which at they delivered your search query on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). This appears right next to the number of results that there are for your keyword.

For example, when I search the term “google caffeine”, the following data is published by Google on the SERP.

It is impossible to compare the search results for keywords against such sites as Bing and Yahoo since they do not publish the speed at which they deliver their SERPs, and who can blame them. There is no sense publishing this data unless they are up to speed with Google.

We live in a microwave society today to say the least. We want everything done for us our way and in an instant. That is why Google has tweeked this part of their search engine. It’s just one more way for them to stay ahead in the search engine marketing game.

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.

A lot of people are totally missing the boat when it comes to marketing their business online. They seem to think that once they have the right to contact you online (maybe you followed them on Twitter or sent a friend request on Facebook) that they also have the right to shove their products and services down your throat as fast and endlessly as they can.

Somehow they seem to miss the fact that their is social etiquette online just like their is social etiquette in everyday life. If you had not seen a friend for a while, would you hit them with your sales pitch right away or would you first try to renew your acquaintance with them by having them over or lunch or dinner? I hope that you would elect to freshen up the relationship first. Now if you have the common sense to handle a friend that way, how do you think that you should handle someone that you have never met online?

I am amused that as soon as you follow someone on Twitter, that you quickly receive Direct Messages pushing their stuff repeatedly. It use to be that email spam was the big problem. Now, it’s social media spam that is rearing it’s ugly head. I think that if these people offered to genuinely help people build their businesses and help individuals achieve their personal goals, then they would have no problem selling their stuff too.

People and companies have no problems with buying. People actually love to buy, but they absolutely detest being sold to. So, if you are about to launch into social marketing, maybe it is best if you think of it as social networking. Take the time to network and help others. It will only increase your bottom line.