Over the past week many webmasters have noticed a sudden change in their rankings & traffic levels giving rise to speculations that Google might have done a date refresh.

Google has now confirmed this speculations saying that Panda 3.2 was released just last week, however it is simply a data refresh of the algorithm with no additional signals or algorithmic changes.

Why this update?

After receiving several complaints from users who found it difficult to find the actual content on a website after they clicked on a result, Google thought it was time for a minor update that got sites with relevant content in the first fold of the web page and push down sites that dedicate a large fraction of the page to ads. With this Panda update, such sites may now not rank as high as they did previously.

As told by Google:

We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the over 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.

The Panda updates first started in February 24th 2011, when the ‘Farmer Update’, an algorithm designed to penalize the content and link farms was rolled out . The next major Panda updates came in the last week of September (Panda 2.5) and November 2011 (Panda 3.1).

Since then, “Panda Update” is a phrase webmasters do not like hearing as it always creates unrest in the SEO world. This update came after a long time since the Panda 3.1 update back in November 2011 after which Google gave a respite to webmasters over the holidays with an announcement of no Panda updates scheduled during holidays.

History of Panda updates is as follows:

• Panda Update 1.0: 24th Feb 2011
• Panda Update 2.0: 11th April 2011
• Panda Update 2.1: 10th May 2011
• Panda Update 2.2: 16th June 2011
• Panda Update 2.3: 23rd July 2011
• Panda Update 2.4: 12th August 2011
• Panda Update 2.5: 28th September 2011
• Panda Update 3.0: 19th October 2011
• Panda Update 3.1: 18th November 2011

So if you have noticed a drop in your ranking and traffic, then you now know why. I wonder when Panda is going to strike next!

Any time there is an update to Google’s search algorithm its big news. Our readers work themselves into a fluster speculating what aspects have changed and the impact it will have on their website’s ranking.

Brace yourself – Google is at it again. There have been some recent changes from Google, but the good news is that there is no need to guess this time, Google has (for once) released details of ten new algorithm changes it has made to how it shows and ranks search results.

In no particular order (and directly from Google), here they are:

1. Cross-language information retrieval updates: For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), we will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.
   What this means for webmasters: You will now be able to reach new markets that you couldn’t previously due to language boundaries.

 

2. Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.
   What this means for webmasters: Ensure you have relevant and quality content on the right pages of your site and spend less time manipulating your header descriptions, and alt and meta tags.

 

3. Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.
   What this means for webmasters: With this information laid out by Google, it is clear that site wide linking (in headers, footers and blog rolls) will not lead to any better ranking.

 

4. Length-based autocomplete predictions in Russian: This improvement reduces the number of long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. We will not make predictions that are very long in comparison either to the partial query or to the other predictions for that partial query. This is already our practice in English.
   What this means for webmasters: Good news for Russian users, but pretty useless for the majority of searchers who use English.

 

5. Extending application rich snippets: We recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.
   What this means for webmasters: software applications must now include descriptive rich snippets in order to get a higher ranking.

 

6. Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, we often revisit signals that we launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, we decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.
   What this means for webmasters: This tweak is aimed to improve image search function. But maybe Google is trying to decrease the link juice from sites like Flicker, Dailymotion etc.

 

7. Fresher, more recent results: As we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.
   What this means for webmasters: In order to rank well in the SERPs, you must be updating your content almost daily especially on blogs.

 

8. Refining official page detection: We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.
   What this means for webmasters: Basically, this is good news for long-established brands. The official sites will get better rankings and the industry giants get a stronger hold on search results too!

 

9. Improvements to date-restricted queries: We changed how we handle result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. This helps ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.
   What this means for webmasters: If your company’s news is in Google News then expect it to be given more prominence now during the time that the news is still relevant.

 

10. Prediction fix for IME queries: This change improves how Autocomplete handles IME queries (queries which contain non-Latin characters). Autocomplete was previously storing the intermediate keystrokes needed to type each character, which would sometimes result in gibberish predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.
    What this means for webmasters: Nothing specific, just that the user experience for non English speaking users will get better.

 

What’s significant from this news is that Google is now providing additional details on both large and small algorithm alterations. Do you think this is a sign of things to come? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Google have confirmed a small update to their “Panda” ranking algorithm which was first spotted by webmasters earlier this month.

There’s been no confirmation on the exact nature of the update, however many users are reporting a change in search results. One user asks:

Is it possible that Panda 3.0 just rolled out (as of May 6, 2011)? Perhaps it’s in the process of rolling out? I’m seeing a massive shake up in the search niches that I monitor, results are bouncing all over the place. My websites seem to be slipping again to a new all time Google referral low.

According to a post on search engine land, Google confirmed that some tweaks have been made but insist that this is a “far smaller” update than the original Panda update. Google won’t release what percentage of queries have been impacted by the change.

Google’s original panda update launched in late February and caused havoc with content farms and low quality content sites. This change impacted about 12% of rankings in the United States and some websites reported traffic declines of around 40%.

Google then rolled out the panda update to all English queries in early April. This included both English speaking countries (eg, google.co.uk) and also any English queries on other Google search engines.

This smaller update marks the third instalment of the “Panda” update, even though it is not expected to have a huge impact.

If you’ve noticed any ranking changes to your website around the 6th – 10th May please let us know in the comments below.

You’d think that Yahoo! would be winding down their investment into search related developments given the Search Alliance finally coming to fruition – BUT you’d be wrong!

Yahoo! is continuing to test and invest in search powered features, with the goal of leveraging the new Search Alliance and ensuring the Bing integration is generating the best experience for their users.

Search is evolving to mean more than entering keywords in a text box – at Yahoo! we believe it’s also about finding the right information at the right time. To help people discover information they want online, we’re enhancing and rolling out new search-powered features across the Yahoo! network.

One of the features that are already generating positive results for the former search titan is “Trending Now” lists – which provide users easy access to searches generating the greatest buzz.

You can find the Trending Now list on the Yahoo.com homepage, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, omg!, and more. When you click on any of the terms on the Trending Now list, you will find the latest information about a hot topic and discover related content from Yahoo! Search.

Yahoo! is also working on some new News based search features. The screen shot below highlights testing of how related information will be integrated into news posts.

So while the search results might be coming from elsewhere, Yahoo! is very much committed to ensuring that they’re integrated in the most engaging way – it’s all about holding their market share!

Google has unveiled a small change to its policy for agencies that manage AdWords campaigns, but this “little” change could have a profound impact on the industry and advertisers.

Until this point, agencies offering PPC management services have had little in the way of regulation on budget and management cost transparency.

Under the new guidelines outlined by Google, PPC management companies will now be required to be upfront about budget spending and the exact results from campaigns:

If you work with another company to manage your AdWords campaigns, you should be able to find out how much of your advertising budget (cost) was spent on AdWords, how many times your ads appeared (impressions) and how many times users clicked on your ads (clicks).

ineedhits are proud to one of the Google AdWords companies that already provide this level of transparency for their clients. It helps them understand budget allocation and more importantly gives them an honest representation of their campaign success.

However there are quite a few operators in the industry that will be forced to review their reporting and cost management practices.

Companies such as ReachLocal and Yodle have received criticism for their lack of transparency – with advertisers unsure exactly how much of their budget is going towards Google clicks vs management costs.

Managing small budget PPC campaigns is definitely challenging – ineedhits can vouch for that; but it’s critical that clients see where their money is being spent.

Google’s new policy will ensure all small business advertisers have access to this level of campaign transparency. While I welcome the forced transparency, it doesn’t provide answers to all the important questions and issues?

What do you think about the change:

• Is this transparency going to help reduce churn through partners?
• Will the transparency help advertisers achieve better campaign results?
• What else would you like to see enforced from PPC service providers.

New back-end technology, several visual overhauls, million dollar marketing campaigns and even dropping the butler have failed to help Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves) regain the search engine market share it lost years ago.

Late last year, Ask.com executives were talking up the search engine’s next move, which has now been unveiled through a private beta.

In a nutshell, Ask.com has been reborn as a search engine that combines their conventional “question driven” search technology with a community powered Answers site.

So why the focus on Q&A you might ask. Here’s the response from the release post:

From a macro trend perspective, the explosion of the social Web underscores both the cultural shift and massive technical innovation of the last 15 years. Simply put: people are using the Web as a conversational medium, ergo, consumers are increasingly asking questions (evidenced by demonstrated interest in Q&A from Google, Facebook and an entire cadre of start-ups).

Here’s some of the features that Ask.com believe will help attract users back:

• Proprietary technology designed for Q&A: Our semantic approach is not simply re-purposed search technology. We’ve taken the last year to enhance our offering to locate the most relevant, high-quality answer and display it right at the top of page (surfing through 10 blue links not required).

• Largest index of questions and answers – 500 million “pairs” and growing: As the number one brand for asking questions, we have the world’s largest index of questions and answers with the ability to extract questions and matching answers from hundreds and thousands of Web sources.

• The human element: To make our community the most effective, Ask.com has the ability to route questions to relevant people based on interests and expertise. This means only the right people will be asked to answer a specific question, reducing spam and question fatigue. Responses from our community will also be indexed and available (depending on level of freshness and relevance) to address future questions posed on Ask.com.
  

• New look and feel: Our site now makes it abundantly clear we are razor-focused on empowering our users to ask and answer questions. You can now access trending information, including the day’s most popular questions, across multiple areas of the site. Learn more detail about our new UI here.

Time will tell whether this refocus on old with a new spin will deliver Ask.com the engagement and user growth it’s after, but if you want to give the beta a test run, then you can register for an invite here.

If you do sign up and take it for a test drive, pop back and let us know how the new Ask.com search engine works for you.

Taking on Google in the search market is always going to be tough, but new search engine Blekko thinks they have what it takes.

After seeing other competitors like Cuil and Wikia fail, are they mad, or do they have a something special?

Blekko’s Background
Blekko has been in development for over 2 and a half years, raising over $20 million from investors in silicon valley. Still in private beta, they have provided some journalists with a preview but are expecting a full launch later this summer.

Beekko is a full search engine (just like Google) with a focus on transparency and user control.

What makes Blekko Different?
Transparency is one of the main ways Blekko differentiate themselves from traditional search engines like Google and Bing. They’re willing to provide all the behind the scenes data that they have to determine rank and relevancy.

This means webmasters can see an unprecedented level of data about content, meta data, and inbound links to their sites.

Their second major point of difference comes in the form of user control. With the slogan “slash the web”, Blekko are giving users the ability to add “slashtags” to any search which filters results through mini indexes of authoritative sites.

Users can create their own slashtags based on a group of URLs and then use this tag to refine any queries they make. For example, if you wanted to look up a certain book on amazon, you may wish to search for the book title using the /amazon slashtag.

Below is an example of how a /wineblogs slashtag might be used,

It would be a big stretch to call Blekko a “Google killer”, but their level of funding and long time in development point to this being a serious play in the search market. Time will tell if it will last.

• NEWS

Google Readies Hong Kong-Based Q&A Site

Google’s efforts around the Chinese market continue with the launch of a Hong Kong based Q&A website. This will replace several products which Google was working on in conjunction with Chinese partners.

Google Revamps Image Search, Debuts Expanded Image Search Ads

Google has given its image service a facelift. In a somewhat Bing-esque style redesign, the service will display more images on the page and image details will only be available via hover info boxes or click through. Google has also opened up advertising on Image search to all advertisers, rather than just image retailers.

The Importance of the Journey: Search Trails and Destination Pages

Bill Slawski explores new papers that Microsoft is presenting at the Geneva SIGIR’10 conference which explore how Search Trails (The pages users visit after a search before reaching their destination) could/should be included in search results.

More Marketers Turning To Digital Media For Brand Building

A new report out by the DMA highlights that more marketers are choosing “Branding” as their main reason for digital marketing. Given the consumer shift online, it makes sense – especially from a reputation perspective.

Optimizing Yourself For The Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance

Yahoo!’s director of search marketing provides some vital tips for advertisers, publishers and webmasters to ensure they’re making the most of the new search alliance.

Skype Launches New Pay-Per-Call System for Advertisers

Skype has partnered with Marchex to deliver a new Pay-per-call advertising solution to the market. The only downside being – users must have the skype program and browser plugin installed.

Report: Click Fraud Rate Up To 18.6 Percent

It seems the paid search industry continues to battle click fraud according to the new report out by Click Forensics, with increases across the board.

Bing’s New Webmaster Tools Are Here

Bing has taken the wraps off the new webmaster area promising to “provide you a simplified, more intuitive experience focused on three key areas: crawl, index and traffic.”

AOL Launches New Mobile Portal and Android Apps

The AOL have unveiled their new mobile portal with an obvious bias for the Android platform. The portal is for HTML5 supporting smartphones, with all the usual “touch” fanfare.

• TOOLS & TIPS:

Conversion Optimization Touch Points: Turning Errors Into Opportunities, Part 1

It’s almost unavoidable that websites will experience errors, but have you looked at your website’s error journey. Here’s some great points for turning errors into opportunities.

Landing Page Best Practices

Landing pages can have a significant impact on the success of your PPC campaigns, and the PPC Hero team cover off a good list of landing page best practices in this post.

How To Transform Search Behavior Into A Great Search Experience

Mark Sprague explains how to use the valuable insights from user search behaviour to guide your website architecture and content strategy.

Optimization Testing 101: Part 2 – 4 Reasons for Site Testing

Surprisingly 73% of marketers aren’t doing any testing whatsoever. Linda Bustos from the Get Elastic blog highlights the importance of optimization testing for your website and campaigns.

Yahoo has sent out an email to advertisers which confirms they will be testing Bing powered organic results on live Yahoo! traffic for the first time this month. This puts the search merger on schedule for a rollout in August which we mentioned last month.

Here’s what they had to say in the email:

To help us deliver on our goal of transition with quality, we are conducting the necessary tests to ensure that all of the many complex, logistical pieces are in place. While there’s nothing you need to do to prepare for testing, please keep in mind the following:

• Though much of our testing is already happening offline, this month we’ll also test the delivery of organic and paid search results provided by Microsoft on live Yahoo! traffic
• Testing volumes will fluctuate during this period, with paid search volume in particular kept low enough to help minimize any potential impact to your account.

As I mentioned earlier, the email also confirms the scheduled transition date for organic results,

Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe.

For website owners, this makes July a good month to start checking your search engine traffic to determine if there’s been any impact on your Yahoo or Bing visitors. You may wish to compare your rankings in Yahoo! vs. Bing and consider revising your SEO strategy if you find any significant differences.

If you’re looking at how to improve your rankings on Bing, Rene has written a great article on Bing SEO advice.

• NEWS:

Google Acquires Metaweb For Smarter Search Results

Google has acquired Metaweb (for an undisclosed amount) in an effort to improve its algorithm smarter. It’s Metaweb’s “freebase” that’s at the core of this move. Watch this space to see how Google integrates Metawebs smarts.

Local Merchants Utilizing Social Media More as Confidence Remains Flat

New report out by Merchantcircle highlights that local merchants are turning to social media even though sentiment remains flat? The lure of free advertising at play.

Yahoo Answers Gets Major Search Upgrades, Email Alerts

The world’s top Answers / Q&A website, Yahoo! Answers, is getting a long overdue search enhancement. The search facilities have long been regarded as inadequate, so the improvements will be welcomed by it’s large base of users.

Bing Continues Growth, Ad Impressions & Clicks Way Up: Report

Bucking the trend, Bing has seen solid growth in its ad impressions and ad clicks, while Yahoo! and Google have seen decline according to Efficient Frontier.

Where you Point Your Mouse May Influence Google Search Rankings, Advertisement Placement, and Oneboxes

Bill Slawski explores one of Google’s new patents where the search giant is exploring how users move their mouse across the search results to help guide their SERP layout and rankings.

Google Fiber for Communities Site Debuts

Google’s plans to roll out high speed less expensive internet to all has taken a major step forward with the roll out of the new “Google Fiber for Communities” website.

Twitter Gives Users Visibility in Search Results

Twitter has now started showing names in search results, give users important visibility online. It’s also more important to manage twitter with your reputation management in mind.

Facebook Ads…Instantly

Don’t have time or the creativity to produce engaging Facebook ads, then this new feature might be for you. It automatically creates ads based on the content of the destination URL. Is that good or bad?

Chitika: Mobile Users 45% More Likely To Search Locally

Online advertising network Chitka have highlighted the propensity for search to be localised from mobiles. Seem fairly obvious right? But it matter when you consider how your promoting your small business.

SEO Tops Digital Marketing Tactics for 2011

It might be hard to believe with all the hype around social media, but Lee Odden’s recent survey highlights what we’re already seeing – that SEO is the primary focus for most businesses in the coming year/s.

Google Announces Partnerships with Ford and General Motors

Google has announced that their Google Maps “Send to Car” service has been extended to Ford and GM vehicles. Send to Car allows users to send business listing information to their cars for easy navigation on the road.

Google Keyword Targeting Tool Launches Globally

Google has released its “broad match modifier tool” to the rest of the world after a successful beta test. The tool helps users create keywords that have broader reach but with more control.

Google Lands Omnicom As Display Ad Partner

Google’s display drive gathers steam. They’ve just partnered with Omnicom who will now include Google’s display inventory in their clients campaigns.

• TIPS & TOOLS

How to Write Keyword Focused Articles and Posts About Timely Topics

Creating fresh content is important for your SEO campaigns, but we often lose track of our keyword focus in favour of trying to be clever or gimmicky. Michael Gray shows you how to stay on track!

How to Know When Your Site Needs SEO Before Social Media

Everyone’s talking about social media as the “new, must-have” marketing strategy. But for many businesses, the bright lights of social media are proving to be a distraction from a more important opportunity through SEO. Find out whether you need SEO over SMO.

The Top 10 Free PPC Tools

There’s nothing like free PPC and SEO tools, and the ever trusty team at Search Engine Journal have delivered a great list of PPC tools to help you research and set up your campaigns.