CHAPTER 1
GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE
Google is the world's most popular web search engine, handling over 3 billion searches a day, amounting to more than 100 billion searches each month (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ technology-23866614). Originally developed in 1997, Google has come a long way from being a tool to search for words in a document to actually understanding what the users want and giving them what they need. This powerful search engine has added value to the web, making it possible to find the information you need within seconds.
With Google being the most popular search engine, search engine optimization has gone on to become synonymous with Google optimization, as webmasters work toward influencing their website rankings on Google. This is done through a complex process which patterns in Google's listings are discerned to determine on-page as well as off-page factors to improve rankings.
Google offers a variety of services to its members. Some directly relate to search engines, and others do not. The specialized searches allow you to find images, maps, news articles, products or services, blog entries, videos, scholarly papers, and much more. Non-search-related services offered by Google include Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Translate, Google Plus, and YouTube.
• Gmail is Google's web-based e-mail program that anyone can sign up for, and it's free.
• Google Docs is a popular storage database that provides free storage space of up to fifteen gigabytes, with another one hundred gigabytes available for a cost of up to $4.99 per month. You can store documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more with a Google Docs account.
• Google Maps allows users to view an address location or get driving directions.
• Google Earth uses Google Maps to create an interactive digital globe.
• Google Translate is a multilingual translation service that allows users to translate written text from one language to another.
• Google+ is a social networking service by Google, with 540 million monthly active users; it is the second-largest social networking site in the world, trailing only Facebook (http://marketingland.com/google-hits-300-million-active-monthly-in-stream-users-540-million-across-google-63354).
• Google owns the popular video-sharing website YouTube, which is used to upload, view, and share videos.
Google also offers various additional services, including Google Checkout, Google AdWords, and Google AdSense. Google Checkout is designed to partner with merchants to make online purchases easier for customers. To create an account, users need to provide a credit or debit card number, which is stored in a secure database. This enables users to make future purchases without having to enter a card number each time.
AdWords allows companies to submit advertisements to Google that contain certain keywords related to their business. These tools serve as a way for Google to provide targeted advertising to users.
CHAPTER 2
RECENT GOOGLE UPDATES
Google Penguin Update
The Google Penguin update, launched in April 2012, aims to flag websites that violate the Webmaster's Guidelines outlined by Google. This update was introduced by Google in an attempt to discourage black-hat SEO techniques, such as link schemes, which are used to manipulate inbound or outbound links to a website.
By making this update, Google has been able to identify thousands of websites that were spamming its search results. This was seen by many as a death knell for SEO and has forced webmasters to look for new, more authentic ways to improve their website rankings on Google. The message from Google was, as usual, to focus on creating high-quality content and employ white-hat SEO methods. Websites that are engaged in black-hat SEO techniques, such as buying links or getting them on link farms in order to achieve high ranks on Google, have been penalized by Penguin update.
How It Works
Google's Penguin update relies on human quality raters to determine the quality of a website. With hundreds of workers dedicated to ranking websites based on a set of predetermined factors, Google is given insight into possible changes.
However, this is just a part of the engineering testing process. Once a proposed change makes it through the initial test phases, it is subjected to a side-by-side test, which is a kind of blind taste test where, for a particular query, two sets of search results are assigned to human raters who give a comparative analysis.
Google Penguin primarily targets websites engaged in deliberate manipulation of search engine results using methods such as cloaking, creating mirror websites, generating fake links using software, etc. The feedback form, prepared by Google two days after this update was launched, involved users in the process by allowing them to report web spam that was still undetected and ask for a reconsideration if they felt their site was unfairly hit.
Effect on Search Listings
When the Penguin update was first launched in 2012, it impacted 3.1 percent of the total search queries on Google. The subsequent data refreshes impacted 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent of the total queries, respectively. This was followed by Penguin 2.0, which, with an impact of 2.3 percent, was the biggest tweak to the Penguin updates since the original update.
Sites that have been impacted by the Penguin updates can work toward getting the penalty lifted by cleaning up their back-link profile. However, merely focusing on the quality of links for your website is not enough, as it is equally important to work toward creating a positive user experience. The idea is to create and promote high-quality content, which provides value to its readers. The creation of natural back links to your website should come as a by-product of your efforts.
Google Panda Update
Introduced in February 2011, Google's Panda update aimed to curb sites with poor quality content and give way to those with high-quality content in Google's search results. The websites that were most affected by this update were those with a large amount of advertising. Those that experienced a positive impact in rankings following the update were news and social networking sites (http://www.wired.com/business/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms). The update, which affected almost 12 percent of all search results on Google, helped to salvage the search engine's reputation at a time when Google's search quality was believed to be flagged.
How It Works
This update presents a development in the use of artificial intelligence, enabling its use in a more scalable manner. To begin, human quality testers were employed to rate thousands of websites based on their quality, trustworthiness, design, speed, and usability.
The next step was to use the new Panda machine-learning algorithm to identify the similarities between websites that received higher ranks, as well as those that were identified as low-quality websites. This helped to calculate the reputation of websites.
Since its introduction, the update has been modified various times to include new ranking factors and exclude previous ones, such as PageRank. The latest update has been the deployment of an over-optimization penalty, which aims to discourage sites that have inferior content but do a good job at SEO.
Difference Between Google Panda and Google Penguin Updates
While the Google Penguin update aimed to identify and penalize websites that are engaged in manipulating search engine results by following methods like cloaking, creation of doorway pages, and keyword stuffing in content, the Google Panda update was about reshuffling search engine ranks to make sure low-quality websites are not ranking on top of search engine results. Google Panda update affected websites having old, outdated, or less content. Also, websites that do not use images, videos, or info-graphics went down in search engine ranks.
Effect on Search Listings
The Google Panda update has had a significant impact on search listings and the web as a whole. Since it has had an impact on the rankings of an entire site, as opposed to just a certain section on the website, it has forced companies to change their entire business models and, in some cases, even shut down completely.
Once a website's rankings are affected by the Google Panda update, the most effective way to recover is to introduce pages with high-quality content to the site. However, Matt Cutts, head of Webspam at Google, emphasizes that simply rewriting content that was spammed due to lack of originality is not enough. The idea is to bring something new to the table. General, nonspecific content cannot be expected to rank well, even if it is not duplicated.
Once you make the necessary changes to your website, you might need to keep delivering positive results for a while before you can expect the Panda penalty to be lifted.
Google Hummingbird Update
Launched on Google's fifteenth anniversary, Google's Hummingbird update marks a significant step toward enabling a stronger interaction between Google and its users, providing more direct answers to search queries. Slated as the "future of search," this update allows users to be less mechanical and more natural when using the Google search engine. This is made possible by Google developing a better understanding of complex human language, as opposed to being limited to simplified keywords. The primary goal of this update is to weed out irrelevant resources from SERPs and identify the actual intent underlying searches.
How It Works
The Google Hummingbird is based on semantic search, which means that it lays focus on user intent, rather than being limited to individual search terms. This makes it possible for searches to be delivered based on the meaning of the whole sentence, instead of just a few keywords. For example, prior to the Hummingbird update, a query like "paying bills through Bank of America" would give you the home page of Bank of America's website as the top result. Post-Hummingbird update, for the same query, you would get a listing of the bill-payment section of Bank of America's website. Google achieves this outstanding question-answering ability through the combination of form-based queries and natural language techniques.
With this update, Google has added comparisons and filters to its algorithm, which make it possible to pull up the most attractive, engaging, and relevant response to the user's search. The basis of this update is that Google needs to understand queries, taking into account the grammatical structure and refined intent. Google is achieving this by adding three levels to search queries: complexity, comparison, and prediction. The result is a smarter search engine that understands concepts, rather than just words.
Effect on Search Listings
Google's Hummingbird update has not had any drastic impact on search listings, although it affected 90 percent of search queries. The guidelines of Google for webmasters who wish to safeguard themselves from any possible impact of this update are to focus on the quality and originality of content, and work toward having high-quality websites linking naturally to their website.
In fact, this update gives you a chance to separate yourself from your competition and be a part of Google's efforts to ensure that the websites that come up in searches are what its users want. The good news is that unlike some of Google's previous updates, Google's Hummingbird update has not been accompanied by any dramatic outcry about lost rankings by publishers. The effect of this update can be better defined as a query-by-query one, as opposed to one causing major traffic shifts.
CHAPTER 3
YAHOO SEARCH ENGINE
Yahoo is a web search engine and portal that was launched in 1995. Yahoo Search is the world's third largest search engine, handling more than 2.15 billion searches every month. (http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press Releases/2013/11/ comScore Releases October 2013 US Search Engine Rankings). Yahoo bought its own search technology, Inktomi, in 2002, and went on to become an independent web-crawler based search engine in 2003. Since then, Yahoo has seen major ups and downs in its market share. In 2009, Yahoo entered into a deal with Microsoft, whereby its search engine is powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine.
Various Online Services Provided By Yahoo
Yahoo's search interface is now available in over thirty-eight international markets, and in at least forty different languages. One of the biggest success stories has been Yahoo Answers, where one can ask a question and get answers from the Yahoo community.
Yahoo News has also been widely successful, becoming the top global news site. (http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-top-news-site-google-second-people-spending-more-time-with-fewer-sites-32451).
Another highly popular service by Yahoo is its photo-sharing and video-hosting site, Flickr, which has more than 3.5 million new images uploaded on it daily. (http:// www.theverge.com/2013/3/20/4121574/flickr-chief-markus-spiering-talks-photos-and-marissa-mayer).
Yahoo introduced a free e-mail service, Yahoo Mail, in 1997, which has more than 281 million active users (http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/gmail-finally-beats-hotmail-according-to-third-party-data-chart/).
Yahoo Sports, launched in 1997, is now one of the world's most popular sports websites, delivering up-to-date news, scores, and information, with its fantasy sports leagues ranking among the most popular web services. According to a survey by ScoreWorldMetrix, Yahoo Sports is the number one online game site, with fans spending more time on it than on any other sports site (http://m.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/ Issues/2013/04/01/Media/Comscores.aspx).
Yahoo Finance provides accurate financial information, as well as updated information on various companies. With more than 37.5 million unique visitors every month, Yahoo Finance ranks as the top financial news and research website in the United States (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/business/media/ cnbc-and-yahoo-finance-expand-partnership-to-online-video. html? r=0).
The Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo is a keyword-based pay-per-click service named Yahoo! Search Marketing, which also provides PPC services through Bing Ads, with options like geotargeting, ad testing, campaign budgeting, and campaign scheduling.
CHAPTER 4
BING SEARCH ENGINE
Previously known by names like MSN Search, Windows Live Search, and Live Search, Bing has been Microsoft's search engine offering, which was launched as Bing in 2009. Bing secured an 18 percent worldwide search share in Oct 2013, outdoing Yahoo, which received 11.3 percent (http://www. comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/11/comScore_Releases_October_ 2013_US_Search_Engine_Rankings).
Bing's interface features, such as the daily changing of its background image, have made it highly popular across the web. It is also powered by attractive media features, such as the video thumbnail preview, image search, advanced filters, and video search.
Bing's instant answers range from sports and finance, to flight tracking, health information, mathematic calculations, advanced computations, and package tracking. Bing provides its users integration with various other web-based services, such as Hotmail, Facebook, Apple, and Windows 8. Bing Health provides access to relevant health information, with article results from experts.
Users can access detailed information on music, movies, television shows, and video games using Bing Entertainment. Bing Maps enables users to search for locations using a roadmap style view, a satellite view, or a hybrid of the two. Other services provided by Bing include Bing Shopping, Bing Translator, Bing Travel, and Bing Videos.
Bing offers a popular marketing service known as Bing Ads, which provides pay-per-click advertising on both Yahoo and Bing. The frequency of how often an advertisement is displayed using this service is determined by a combination of how much the advertiser is willing to pay and the click-through rate (CTR) of the advertisement. The success of advertising through this service widely depends on how effectively the ads are written and the relevancy of the advertisements to the searches made on the website.
