One of the most heated debates in the SEO sector can be generated by Google's PageRank and specifically the green PageRank indicator on the Google Toolbar - is this really a useful indicator of how Google's views each web page, or should it be completely ignored as a distraction? The question is also raised as to what purpose this indicator serves for most web users and why Google even bothers to display this.

Google's trademarked 'PageRank' algorithm and underlying technology is one of the main foundations of the search engine developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and was also a core factor that enabled Google's search results quality to stand out from existing search engines when it first launched in the late 1990's. Google's own corporate pages describe PageRank as follows:

PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.

The underlying PageRank algorithm is a complex mathematical formula, which is then simplified by the short indicator bar on the Google Toolbar, where the green colour filling the bar indicates the PageRank 'score' between 0/10 and 10/10. New sites will start with a completely grey bar with no score and then develop a higher PageRank as the site gets indexed and starts attracting links from other domains.

The PageRank score on the Toolbar is a snapshot and an occasionally updated figure - Google's Matt Cutts recently alerted people in his blog that a new update was being posted and back in 2006 had provided more information about the Toolbar indicator with answers to some readers' questions. It's clear that it would be wrong to place too much emphasis on this Toolbar figure for each website and web page, but it's also short-sighted to dismiss it completely when it does provide some degree of information from Google's perspective.

So the Google Toolbar shouldn't be a figure of primary concern but a useful indicator of relative performance and potential development. It does give website marketers a view of their own and competitors web pages and how pages within a site hold different PageRank scores. It shouldn't be a core driver of an SEO strategy but perhaps confirmation of how the search marketing support for a site is developing its potential performance on Google.

There's an excellent article on Google PageRank provided by Search Engine Land.

Labels: google, search engines

The Google Webmaster blog has been running a series of posts over the past 2 weeks outlining the use of the 404 'response code' which is generated when a server cannot find a requested page, either due to a bad link or a mistyped URL / page name. In these cases websites should display an error page that informs the user of the problem and helps to direct them to the Home Page or other part of the website.

One blog posting describes the differences between a 'soft 404' and 'hard 404' response, recommending that the former shouldn't be used. Then there are a series of FAQs about how the 404 should be used, leading up to the latest blog posting which is promoting the use of a new 'widget' being provided by Google.

This allows webmasters to add some JavaScript to their customised 404 pages which will suggest to a user the closest match to a truncated URL or missing page. In addition, this 404 widget - which is still in test phase - will suggest a link to the parent subdirectory, a sitemap webpage or a site search query suggestions and search box, if these are available on the site.

Labels: google, webmaster tools

Over the past few months the 'Official Google Blog' has been posting an occasional series of articles about search quality, explaining what the team at Google do and how they develop and maintain the quality of their search rankings. Of course they aren't revealing the inner secrets of Google's algorithm, but there is some more openness being shown to explain to users what some of the main issues are that Google considers important.

The first post back in May provided a background to the search quality team at Google and explained what they do. It introduces the blog posts that will explain more about the process and outlines the factors behind the ways of determining ranking position and trying to relate a user's search query with the correct set of results. It explains how different parts of the search team work on developing and evaluating the ranking process, adding new features and fighting 'webspam'.

The second post appeared over a month later at the start of July and explained more about the process of Google's ranking system. This is based on 3 basic principles that are outlined in some more detail - namely that the best locally relevant results are served globally, the ranking system is kept as simple as possible, and that there should be no manual intervention.

The next blog post was a more technical look at the issue of Information Retrieval and how this technology is used to determine results based on understanding pages, search queries and user intent. The most recent post earlier this month describes the developments in the search experience and how Google has tried to enhance the ways that results are presented to users, including spelling corrections, the presentation of results and text 'snippets' to enable users to assess the listings, and also query refinements or suggestions.

Google will be continuing this series in the future and although this is very much a PR exercise, there are some useful insights in these articles to explain how the search engine works.

Labels: google, search engines

Google have introduced a new tool that helps to extend the data available from Google Trends, whereby users can track and compare the search activity for a number of search terms over time. The new tool, called Insights for Search, is designed primarily for advertisers and provides more information for marketers to understand search behaviour, as well as including some new features like a world 'heat map' to graphically display search volume and regional interest.

Like Google Trends, the new tool enables users to enter a search term and view the search volume patterns over time, back as far as 2004. It also shows top related and rising searches and there's the option to compare search volume trends across multiple search terms, different categories, geographic regions, or specific time ranges. A Google account is required to log in and view the numbers from the graph and to download the data into a spreadsheet.

Labels: google, research

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a new deal for Google to provide a free email service to schools across NSW. Said to be the biggest single client in the world for Google, they have managed to secure the contract away from the incumbent Microsoft system and will service up to 1.3 million new users for the Gmail service.

The NSW Department of Education has said that the new email system would be in place for the start of the 2009 school year and is a $9.5 million contract over 3 years. These costs cover the development of tight security options for the Gmail users and integrating the system for teachers and students within the existing education portal within the State. The attraction to Google is that students will become familiar with Gmail through the use at school and then continue to be users through their own accounts in later years.

Labels: email systems, google

Google first announced the development of its 'Knol' website back in December last year and they have now 'officially' launched the site, although it is still showing as a beta version. Although seen by some as a potential competitor to Wikipedia, Knol is positioned as a source of authoritative articles on specific topics, written by experts in the field. It is therefore unlikely to develop at the speed of Wikipedia and to the same scale of content, but intends to be seen as a reliable source of information.

At the moment, much of the content on Knol is of a medical or scientific nature. Google wants this site to encourage people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone, with the key principle behind Knol being 'authorship'. Every knol (or unit of knowledge) will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. There are likely to be multiple knols written on the same subject, which Google will encourage, as long as content is informed and reliable.

Knol will promote "moderated collaboration" so that authors work together to develop each article that they specialise in, so that any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content.

It sounds like a potential source of disagreement or debate on many contentious subjects from a multitude of real or 'perceived' experts, but Google is hoping that these knols will include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol.

It's unlikely that Wikipedia will be too worried about Knol, at least for now, although Google retains strong control over the visitor traffic coming into Wikipedia, where the site is often a ubiquitous part of many search engine listings. Google could easily adjust their algorithms in the future to make Wikipedia less visible and to promote the use of Knol as a primary research tool.

Labels: google

Google AdWords has pushed the Placement Targeting option to mainstream PPC advertisers by making this option a more prominent part of the AdGroup management panel. The development of placement targeting is also another way that advertisers can now gain more control of the content targeted network and target their adverts on other relevant third-party websites.

Placement targeting can either be included within existing AdGroups, or set up as a separate campaign. A new Placements tab in the AdGroup control panel provides advertisers with the option of including this feature and targeting specific domains, or even sections of large sites, through a number of selection tools.

The advertiser's advert will still appear within the content targeted network if this is selected, but with Placement Targeting there is now more control over bidding strategies on domains that are more relevant to their market. You can select sites by browsing subject categories, searching sites related to keywords, or by finding similar sites to known domains that are relevant.

The list of suggested sites that Google presents includes details on the ad formats available and the likely impressions per day. The focus of the tool does leave something to be desired in some markets, but by selecting specific websites and adjusting bid levels, advertisers can put more focus on this part of their AdWords campaign and combine targeted sites with specific keywords for greater focus.

Labels: google, ppc

Since the demise of the Overture Search Suggestion Tool into Yahoo!'s new 'Panama' PPC system, the best free keyword research tool has been Google's own tool which is provided as part of a PPC account as well as a free tool available to anyone to use. This tool is important because it reports search activity on Google over the previous month, but the main drawback has been that no volume data has been displayed - just a comparative bar chart for each term to indicate relative popularity.

However, Google's AdWords blog has announced the new change which has appeared this week, whereby Google is now displaying volume data for these terms, at least within a general range, so that more information can be gleaned on the popularity of each term and the likely search volumes that they attract. So although these are approximated figures, it helps to add an extra level of data onto this already useful tool and should benefit all online advertisers as one of the core research tools to use when looking for the best search terms to target, either through PPC or SEO.

Labels: google, keywords, ppc

The Google Webmaster blog has outlined ways that they are now developing better access to Adobe Flash files, which have traditionally been very difficult for search engine spiders to index, either for content or to follow links. Adobe has been working with Google and with Yahoo! to improve the performance of these files, which is certainly progress but still doesn't make Flash as accessible as standard HTML content.

Google reports that they are now able to better index text content within all types of SWF files now, as well as identifying URL links and following these to index additional content or page files that may be linked from the Flash file. However, images and video files cannot be indexed in this way. There are also limitations with Flash files loaded through Javascript, as these can't currently be identified and indexed, nor will content loaded from an external source within the Flash file.

Further developments are apparently still underway and this area may improve further in the future, so that Flash developers need to be aware of these requirements if the web content needs to be indexed for search.

Labels: flash, google, search indexing

The ongoing court case in the US between Google and Viacom over the use of copyright video content on YouTube has taken a notable turn this week as the judge has ruled that Google must reveal the viewing habits of every user on YouTube who has ever viewed a video. As reported by the BBC, the ruling means that Google must hand over the viewing log to Viacom, which contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

This development clearly has major implications for online privacy and Google are now arguing about the format of the data and the need to conceal individual user's details. This depth of information shouldn't be necessary for Viacom, who want to assess the total viewing patterns of their content through YouTube (which includes clips from MTV and Paramount Pictures). They have previously claimed that about 160,000 unauthorised clips of Viacom's programmes were available on YouTube prior to 2007 and that these had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Viacom had also requested access to Google's source code for YouTube, but the court turned down this, since it recognised that it was effectively a "trade secret" and therefore shouldn't be disclosed. However, Google hope that the court will allow them to anonymise the data on individual user habits - nevertheless, this ruling means that Viacom will have access to a huge amount of activity logs in what is becoming an increasingly bitter legal case between these 2 giant US companies.

The eventual ruling in the case is likely to become a landmark case in Internet history and potentially affect the way that online video sites can operate in the future.

Labels: google, legal issues, youtube

A report by The New York Times claims that research undertaken over recent months by Piper Jaffray in the US has uncovered apparent ways that Google is now testing behavioural targeting for its PPC adverts. By using the huge amount of data that has been collected on search activity and patterns in the past, Google may be starting to display different adverts to people based on their previous search activity - so that the example given indicates that if a searcher looks for “scuba,” then something else, and then “vacations" could pull up ads for diving trips.

It's no secret that Google is using it's massive source of data to understand search activity and to target activity in different ways, such as through the personalised iGoogle tool and also the likely development with banner advertising that followed the acquisition of DoubleClick last year. Some of this data collection is using 'cookies', which are small files attached to web actions from individual users.

Google had changed its privacy policy several years ago and indicated to users that it might record personal information about them for reasons that included “the display of customized content and advertising.” In 2007 Google also started looking at the immediately previous search when considering the display of PPC ads although Google did not need to use cookies for this because web browsers report the address of the previous site visited to the current site being visited and in the case of a search, that address contains the search terms.

This type of development in search targeting or behavioural targeting is becoming one of the main areas where the search engines will be competing to gain market advantage over the next few years and to improve the targeting services being offered to advertisers. Google, Yahoo! and MSN are all looking at tackling this issue with different approaches, although all of which are likely to raise privacy concerns, including possible legal cases in the future depending on the methods being used. However, it also should mean better relevancy for both searcher and advertiser if the balance between targeting and privacy can be achieved.

Labels: google, ppc, search behaviour

A report by mocoNews indicates that Google is also starting to dominate the mobile search market. Taking figures from the latest Nielsen Mobile survey, Google is shown to have a 61% share of mobile searches in the US, followed by Yahoo! at 18% and MSN at 5%. This is probably not a surprising trend as searchers are likely to use the same search tools that they find most useful on the web, although performance and results in the mobile sector will also determine usage.

This issue was covered by an article earlier this month by USA Today, which reported on the strategies that the main search companies are taking to gain a share of the rapidly growing mobile, including Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system and Google's 'Android' project. The general feeling that the mobile web is likely to become an advertising goldmine is not being lost on these companies who are working to establish a foothold now and ensure that they don't miss these new opportunities that could determine future business success or failure.

Labels: google, mobile search

Google has recently announced some additions to their Google Trends tool which includes the option to now download the stats into a spreadsheet. Google Trends can be a useful tool to look at how different search terms or phrases may have been used over time, as well as by geographic area or language.

You need to have a Google Account to get access to the full data from this tool, but once in you can view trends by individual terms or you can compare two terms together. Data is scaled to fit the comparative charts, but it helps to provide seasonal usage of terms, or the market responses to particular news stories or other events that may drive search activity. With the new option to download the data into a spreadsheet format it provide new ways to analyse the data for your particular business needs.

The Google Webmaster blog has also just announced the addition of an extra layer to the Google Trends data which is still in development phase but enables users to view the activity on popular websites based on the way that the number of unique visitors has changed over the last 12 months, the countries where the site/s are most popular, the top related sites and search terms used. For example, a search for Amazon shows the different visitor trends between countries and the high traffic spikes each year prior to Christmas where the site has a particularly strong presence, such as the US and UK.

Labels: google, search behaviour

After much speculation, Yahoo! has now agreed a deal with Google to carry their search advertising in return for a revenue share. As reported by many news agencies, including Reuters, the deal forms a non-exclusive partnership and Yahoo! say they have made this move after failing to agree a deal with Microsoft who had revised their earlier acquisition approach to now buy just Yahoo!'s search business.

Under the new arrangement with Google (which follows an earlier trial period), Yahoo! will run Google's AdSense PPC adverts alongside its own search results and on some of its websites, but only in the United States and Canada for the time being. Yahoo! will also retain control over where the Google ads will run and which search terms will be used - there is more information published by Google on their official blog. The deal has been agreed to initially cover four years, with options to renew it up to a period of 10 years.

Yahoo! must see this as part of a rescue plan for its ailing business since it expects the deal to create an additional $250 million to $450 million operating cash flow within the first year. However, within the brief press release there is no mention of what impact this arrangement will have with Yahoo!'s own PPC service and for the advertisers currently running accounts in these regions, but it seems to indicate that Yahoo! expect to make more from this model than developing their own service. More on this should become clearer over the next few weeks or months.

Labels: google, ppc, yahoo

The Google Webmaster Blog has posted some useful information on ways to manage the issue of duplicate content, which is becoming a common issue for many sites. This may be caused due to the difficulties of managing large dynamic sites, or very often due to syndicated content being shared between sites. The other main example used by Google relates to content which may be duplicated due to 'screen scraping' by third-party websites that are creating mass content from original sources, which can occur for various reasons.

The Google article provides links to previously published advice and tips on how to handle such situations. It also provides guidelines on ways to ensure that original content can be indexed by Google, which should be the main concern for the content creator.

Labels: google, search engines

A recent posting on the Official Google Blog by a senior search engineer reveals some more information about how the Google search engine ranks sites and the ongoing work that goes into improving ranking results. As the article says, the many ranking criteria that drive the search algorithms remain a trade secret to protect themselves from competitors and abuse of the system, but more insight is provided here.

It outlines all the different factors that can make an automatic assessment of a web page a difficult task and the need to match a short search query with the most relevant results within milliseconds. This can only have become harder with the introduction of 'universal' search results over the past year. The original PageRank algorithm remains a core part of Google's ranking criteria but this is combined with other issues such as different models to cope with language, query usage, recency, personalisation and regional results.

A team of engineers works on the evaluation of search results quality and many changes or enhancements can be made during the year - for example, in 2007, over 450 new improvements were introduced, ranging from simple improvements to more complicated changes. The article reveals that significant changes were made to the PageRank algorithm in January which could have dramatically affected the rankings for some websites.

Other teams work on new features and new user interfaces, with the latter group assisted by a team of usability experts who conduct user studies and evaluate new features with Google users around the world. Then, of course, there is the team of engineers who focus on fighting webspam and other types of search engine abuse, such as hidden text to off-topic pages stuffed with irrelevant keywords and other attempts to fix ranking positions. The team may spot new spam trends (or have them reported to them) and then works to counter those trends within the ranking algorithms.

Overall it's a well-written, clearly explained introduction to what goes on 'behind the scenes' at Google and indicates a new willingness to share some of this information with the wider public. It's also a sign of better PR being undertaken with possibly an attempt to avert some of the more negative press and comment that a company of Google's size and prominence starts to attract.

Labels: algorithms, google, search engines

The New York Times reports that Google executives have expressed a desire to develop the advertising relationship with Yahoo! that was tested for several weeks recently with AdWords appearing alongside Yahoo!'s search results. This is partly a move to ward off any possible future attempts by Microsoft to make a bid for Yahoo! but could also be a lucrative development for both Google and Yahoo!

Any arrangement, should it go ahead, would face antitrust investigation in the US due to the dominance of the search advertising market by the two companies. It would also have serious implications for Yahoo!'s own PPC advertising system, which is still struggling to compete against Google, despite a facelift and relaunch in recent years. Such a move would also place even more power within Google's control and advertisers would have even fewer options to place search advertising so that bid rates would continue to rise.

Labels: google, ppc, yahoo

A recent article by The New York Times reports on a research paper presented at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing by 2 Google scientists, which described the development of 'VisualRank' by the search engine. This is the prototype algorithm that combines image-recognition software techniques with the methods for weighting and ranking images that look most similar. Described as the equivalent of Google's main PageRank system adapted for digital images, it's being seen as potentially a big step forward for the quality of image searching on the web.

Image search has long been one of the most popular 'vertical' search options on the main search engines and more recently Google, Ask and the others have been 'blending' image results into the main search results list, when relevant, thereby giving image search results far more exposure to mainstream searchers. Up until now, image results are usually generated from information in the file name and surrounding page content, but Google - and others - are working on ways to analyse image form and shape similarities.

The article says that Google has been working on a sample of around 2,000 of the most popular product queries from Google’s product search - so items such as iPod and Xbox - and then sorting the top 10 images both from its main ranking system and the standard Google image search results. Using a team of 150 Google employees, the researchers then created a scoring system for image “relevance”, which is being referred to as VisualRank. The outcome of this development, according to the researchers, was to retrieve new image results that were 83% less irrelevant.

Labels: google, image search

Google is facing another lawsuit in the US, according to a report by CNet. The claim aims to take a class action status for many affected advertisers and has been filed by the same firm that previously won significant cases against both Yahoo! and Google for click fraud issues. The new claim accuses Google of deceiving its customers into paying for ads they didn't expressly request.

This is based on the sign-up process for a new AdWords account whereby advertisers are automatically included in the 3rd-party content network of adverts (Google AdSense). There is not an obvious opt-out option for this part of the advertising network and advertisers need to enter the campaign settings after the account has been set up in order to deselect this option.

It is likely that Google will need to revise this system in the future to make it more obvious to advertisers what they are selecting and how they can easily opt-out if required. It also seems to be the nature of being a big corporation now that Google will continue to face these types of action whenever a potential failure in their system can be exploited for money.

Labels: google, legal issues, ppc