Lately we are seeing more and more evidence that Google maybe loosing its grip on the search field. One of the main reasons for saying this is because we are seeing huge problems in the UK results at the moment.

Basically a huge volume of USA based sites are being filtered through and its something that actually looks veryworrying. Google or Matt Cutts have yet to say anything about what has happened, but I can assure you that its something UK searchers do not want to see especially for product related terms.

As an example if someone searched for “Buy computer games” or another product related term they do not want to see results that are USA based, it just doesn’t make sense.

Next if we then look at Google Trends

For almost every product related search you will notice that we are seeing a gradual decrease in volumes. This shows that users are just not searching like they used too. But another interesting fact is that if you search for brand names on Google trends such as “Ebay” or “Amazon” you will notice a great rise in overall volumes.

Which potentially shows that a lot of people could be losing trust in Google over the past few years. I mean why shouldnt they? Google’s popularity grew because they were the best they had the best possible results for someone making a search. Looking at the UK results in their current state looks pretty shocking and to be honest I have not seen results that bad from Google for years.

Dont get me wrong I love Google like most people, but it just seems as though they are taking their eye off the ball a little, and what a bad time for this to happen, because as we know Bing has recently launched and personally their results are looking a lot better.

I would really like to get some answers on the state of the UK results and the reasons behind it? Matt Cutts?

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When I have been surfing the internet for the latest SEO news, I came across this unique list on how to rank in Twitter for a keyword entitled “5 Steps to Ranking #1 on Twitter“. But I’m wondering what does the author mean for ranking #1. Rank where? The Twitter directory? The search engine? or the top Twitter user list?

The author of the said article indicated five ways on how to ‘increase the ranking’ of a person. He cited the name, username, bio, account activity and number of followers. I agree with him that to be able to achieve maximum potential in Twitter, one must optimize a keyword in all these areas. But what he failed to point out is the different forms of search on Twitter.

Search on Twitter is not one-dimensional. It is not as direct as search engines. Twitter can be searched in various areas such as trends, hash tags, and directories. I think the author failed to point out in the area on which his tips will be more useful.

I also tried the effectiveness of Twitter in ranking in search engines. I have found out how personalities such as Britney Spears, TechCrunch and Kevin Rose have their Twitter profiles in the top 10 rankings when their name is searched.

I have also tried it on myself and yielded the same rankings.

With this, we can say that Twitter can contribute to ranking for certain brands. But how about keywords? I think this can be effective if you put keywords in your username or bio. With hashtag search, you will be associated with a particular term and you may build your credibility on a certain topic based on Twitter conversations. However, I have only tested the search engines on brand search and not on direct keyword search. As for directories, people can control the niche they are associated with because they can freely choose which categories should they belong to.

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The latest post on SEOmoz blog entitled “Nofollow is Dying: The Impact of Microblogging and Nofollow on SEO” touched on a very important issue in the the SEO world – that is the importance of nofollow links. SEOs have always believed that links should always be done on dofollow sites because nofollow does not provide link juice. However, SEOmoz have this theory that nofollow does not matter anymore.

SEOmoz provided good basis for this claim. The author referred to microblogging platforms such as Twitter that only have nofollow links. However, the conversion of these links are phenomenal since links are shown to concerned followers. If this idea is going to be applied to SEO, this can somehow change the search engines’ algorithm. With their goal of providing the most relevant search results to their users, it is not surprising if they will consider nofollow microblogging links in the future.

Another basis SEOmoz have presented is the explosion of 3rd party program users. Like social media sites such as Twitter, 3rd party websites such as blogger, wordpress.com and others usually have nofollow links. However, with the increase in users, search engines can’t always say that the links to these blogs must be ignored. Some of them are relevant and ignoring them are not practical.

Third, nofollow links have been proven to be more trusted. This can be attributed to the announcement that nofollow links are not counted by search engines. It is with this reason that spam is not present in most of the nofollow websites. Spammers usually flood the dofollow sites with their links expecting link juice. Ironically, the people who try to game the system only make the dofollow links look worse than the nofollow links. This is an aspect that search engines may consider as they weigh which link is worth more.

I have personal experience with this as well. I have found that the search engines managed to crawl my site even if I commented on related nofollow sites. I tried searching the links and the nofollow comment came out in the listings. This means that the search engines are still counting that link even if it comes from a nofollow blog.

However, this is just a theory. I think it is still best for Google to have this rule because it limits comment spam as well as build relevant content to a particular page. But it is still an interesting thing to know that nofollow may also be valued by search engines.

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With the creation of the canonical tag, the existence of a particular content in multiple links is not considered as duplicate. Finally, content can now be freely archived and searched. SEOs do not need to worry anymore about their rankings because of the new link structure.

The use of the canonical tag is better understood with an example. We all know that a blog post can exist in multiple links: a regular blog post page (http://www.sitename.com/blog/?p=12), a blog post page with permalink structure (http://www.sitename.com/blog/2009/02/blog-post-name/), a search results page (http://www.sitename.com/blog/?search=SEO) or the home page (http://www.sitename.com/blog). With this in mind, we risk the uniqueness of the content because it exists in multiple links. We may also face some problems with search engines since they only allot a particular amount of bandwidth for each website. If they manage to crawl all the pages you have that contains the same content, this may hurt your rankings.

This is where the canonical tag comes in. It simply ‘hints’ the search engine on which link to index. To do this, one has to simply put <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.sitename.com/blog/2009/02/blog-post-name /” /> within the <head> tags. The search engines will simply read this and take the hint that all other links must be ignored and only the link indicated in the canonical tag must be indexed.

Of course, this is good news for a lot of SEOs. They can now tell the search engines which part of the site to index and which to ignore. It gives both the writer and search engine an easier job.

However, this raises the question on whether or not the canonical tag will be abused. What if a website who copies its content from another site proclaims itself as canonical? Will the search engine index the other site? It is not pointed out if the tag is only applicable in one domain. The only thing one can count on is the human element in Google’s ranking system. They are the only people who can determine which is the real website to rank.

Although the search engines guaranteed that they will only use the tag 99% of the time, it still raises a lot of issues such as the abuse of sploggers and scrapers. Having the human element only 1% of the time will automate processes and please SEOs. However, it will also provide lots of venues for abuse and less security for honest web developers.

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Usually when you search for results using queries with the help of search engines, you will get details including web pages and URL links.

A recent patent application from Microsoft describes how images could be displayed as web pages to the searchers, when search results are being shown. This patent application also considers how images could be displayed to the users, if there is more than one image in a single page.

The search engine will determine the importance of each image in the website using automated process. Based on the features of the image, the dominance will be evaluated. If different images have same dominance, one that is more relevant to the query will be considered for display. The features generally considered include the size of the image, the location of the web page etc.

For this patent, Microsoft explored different image level features as well as page level features. This even included the features from a website level. Thus, images will help in determining the page rank by the search engines. As a result, this will change the interests of website users, especially search engine users when using Microsoft search engine patent in getting images for their searches.

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Search engines care much about the presence of spam in their search results. SEO optimization cares a lot about technical as well as informational base for the websites so that users will get all relevant information and data from the search engines. Microsoft has come up with a recent patent application stating the classification system that helps search engines in working with the spam. This will help the search engines to optimize those results which are not useful for the particular queries. This system normally works on the basis of the comparing features which will search queries and other features of the web pages. In fact, this helps to rank the pages better for the queries as well.

When the pages that is more relevant for the search is displayed, those pages which are spam are less likely to be displayed. The patent describes that, there are various reasons for keeping from displaying the spam pages along with the web page results of searches. The most important reason is that when the spam pages increase, users might switch to other search engines. Another reason is that websites might start using spamming techniques to increase their ratings over the spam pages.

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Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer has dismissed the idea of Google going for Android operating system. On the annual investment day, Ballmer has openly made announcements that designing Android is not something easier for Google.

He has already challenged Google’s ability to make money with the help of Android. He says that he can’t understand the strategy employed by Google. He has also expressed his doubts regarding whether Google has the expertise to take it along. There are various issues in getting this done and whether Google has the potential to accomplish the launch of first, second and third generations. 

This controversial declaration made by the Microsoft executive has already received various comments. He questions the launch of a new product by Google without a revenue model. He also raised questions regarding what Google has claimed their investors about this. 

Google’s supporters do believe that Google has in it which will surely aid in the growth of android. They have started questioning Ballmer. As far as Google is considered, their experience and the past history reveal that, they have the potential to achieve and MS has no power of discussing this in a negative way. Many have started cursing saying, Ballmer is speaking from the worst experience he had, but the case is different with Google, who has already proved themselves.

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Recession has many faces and the SEO industry isn’t all together safe. First there were desperate attempts by Microsoft to take over Yahoo, but having failed hasn’t stopped Microsoft from being interested. In fact they’re even hopeful regarding the Yahoo and AOL merger because they can again make attempts to take over. In fact, many market experts still suggest that Microsoft and Yahoo would rather find some common ground and seal the deal than have Yahoo cut up and used in different ways. The implications are serious and the outcome will have long lasting effects on the SEO industry.

The third quarter has already spelt doom for most companies and before the end of another disastrous 4th quarter; it’s likely that AOL and Yahoo will wrap up talks. Both companies are in serious talks and management at different levels are negotiating to find the best outcome. The financial meltdown has affected stocks of both companies and trends don’t suggest that things will stabilise if not handles immediately. From $3, to a value of $11 or $12, things don’t look too good for Ballmer. As if tension wasn’t mounting, there really is time factor that’s playing havoc. The SEO industry is faced with unknown changes; the world is waiting and watching.

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Visions based document segmentation is a new patent obtained by Microsoft. The web pages have so much diversity in topics including content, links, labels and ads that search engines will find it really difficult to index and get the pages for the searchers.

This patent considers breaking down the web pages into a number of different blocks having meaning. This is done on the basis of how we see the page. These sections are identified as portions of the page with varying meanings and this might be completely unrelated to one another.

The existence of the blocks will be helpful to the search engine when they look for pages and will decide on the indexing based on the content found in that page. This will help the searchers to get more information on what they were looking for.

The page as per the patent is broken into visual blocks and the differences in the page sections are found out. This is used to create the visual separations between the sections. These blocks and the separators are used to create a content structure for that page. The pages are not directly ranked, but the sections and the blocks of the pages are used for ranking so that, it is easier to find out the right information for the searchers.

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