Posts Tagged search

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 engine.

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It is impossible to compare the search results for keywords against such sites as Bing and Yahoo since they do not publish the speed at which they deliver their SERPs, and who can blame them.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.

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.