Google Panda Algorithm Update Is Presently A Year Old
February 24,2012 was the one year anniversary of Google released one of the most spoken about algorithm updates ever – the Google Panda update. Panda is a filter that lets Google sift out content deemed to be short of substantial substance. Panda is just 1 of over 200 diverse factors Google uses in order to rank pages.
Following is the history of the update created so far:
Panda 1.0 – February 24th
Panda 2.0 – April 11th or so.
Panda 2.1 – May 9th or so.
Panda 2.2 – June 18th or so.
Panda 2.3 – Around July 22nd.
Panda 2.4 – August
Panda 2.5 – September 28th
Panda 2.5.1 – October 9th
Panda 2.5.2 – October 13th
Panda 2.5.3 – October 19/20th
Panda 3.1 – November 18th
Panda 3.2 – about January 15th
Latest figures and surveys reveal that after a year only 13% webmasters have confirmed to be completely recovered from the Panda slap.The rest are still making updations to come back in SERPs.
Google Takes a Dive into the Deep Blue Sea
The highlight of the project is that it has two robots which can explore depths not feasible even for scuba divers and if one of the robots gets stuck in the coral reef, the other can help it out.
If both get stuck at the same time then this can get into troubled waters…
Google Images Related Searches Update
Google have had the feature of related searches for quite some time now. One can remember seeing blue links at the top of image search results suggesting possible search terms the user would be interested in. This feature has been explained in the Google Inside search blog as ‘Helping you find what’s in the mind’s eye’.
Now to make this feature more visually appealing and to give more options for Google image search users, now they have added a hover feature. This hover feature will present before users a panel of images once we mouse over the related search terms.
For instance if you search for the term Soccer then you can see related terms at top like soccer ball, funny soccer, soccer player and soccer field. If you hover (mouse over) soccer player then you can see a panel displaying a set of images for that term
Google Specifies 500KB Crawl Limit For Robots.txt Files
John Mueller, the Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google Switzerland has stated that Google is restricted to only dealing up to 500KB of their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt is a text (not html) file you place on your site to convey to search robots which pages you would like them not to visit. Robots.txt is by no means compulsory for search engines but usually search engines obey what they are asked not to do.
John Mueller made a statement on his Google+ page that stated that if you have a giant robots.txt file, bear in mind that Googlebot will only read the first 500kb. If your robots.txt is longer, it can result in a line being truncated in an unnecessary way. The simple solution is to limit your robots.txt files to a realistic size.
If your robot.txt file is of a large size and goes beyond 500 KB, then not only will it result in Googlebot ignoring everything that follows the limit but it will also auto truncate the file, which may cause your website’s health in Google search.
John Mueller is currently answering all queries regarding robots.txt handling on his Google+ page https://plus.google.com/113006028898915385825/posts/Wbk17p6bMSe
Google Penalizes Its Own Chrome
Google has penalized its own Chrome browser in the search results, which stunned the entire search engine industry. Google has levied a penalty against the browser due to which Chrome has lost its position in SERP.The 60 day penalty has already taken effect and Chrome is not ranking for keyword like-’internet browser’.
Further, the page rank of www.google.com/chrome has been lowered too. Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam team has established the penalty via a post on Google Plus. He has stated that in response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for atleast 60 days.Subsequently, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up identical to any other company would. During the 60 days, the Page Rank of www.google.com/chrome will also be reduced.
The above reaction of Google was due to the fact that the search engine was accused of buying links for promoting their browser-Google Chrome. It was divulged that Google was a part of a sponsored posts SEO campaign dedicated to buying links for Chrome. Nevertheless, in their reaction, Google has denied any information of the quality guidelines being dishonored, as they were conscious of only buying video ads.
How to recover malware hacked sites
Today Malware and hacked sites had become more common factor among our websites. We do suffer once our site got hacked and none of us want to see our website to be “Malware Hacked” or “This website is harmful to visit”. This is not only disappointing you but also your user in turn. Also if this Malware attack to you website is severing due to your lethargy you may sometime lose your ranking in SERP’s too.
Let’s discuss how to recover once your website got hacked.
- Always prefer safe browsing diagnostic.
- Check out for webmaster tools frequently since it gives proper alerts about your complete website that includes malware warning too.
- Login to webmaster tools and click to Diagnostic ==> Malware. Check for the pages that have been attacked by malware code.
- Remove all the codes and upload your new files to server.
- Also go for this option in webmaster tools “Fetch as Google bot”. This will check your page as Google bot and say does your website still have malware code or not.
- Check for your .htaccess code and all you index files which have maximum possible to inject these virus codes.
- Once you confirm that all your files are cleaned up then click on
- Diagnostic ==> Malware ==> Review and send a request to Google to review your website and reconsider it.
- Keep your system up to date and clean your system daily as possible.
- Also update your CMS or Word press to most resent/updated provision one.
- Change your password frequently. Always prefer some tough password using special character that would be strong enough to keep out of hackers.
- Always change your password once your website got hacked.
SEO – Do’s and Don’ts
Do’s
- Always work in user point of view. Focus the users, not search engines.
- Navigation paths in your site must be clean. If a visitor explore your site, he should feel very comfortable.
- Apply labels for all the pages very clearly. Give a brief about it so that your users will understand the page better.
- Be sure about the information you are publishing in website. All the contents in your website must be helpful for users.
- Submit sitemaps if you add new pages. This will let the search engines to know about the new pages and getting crawled.
- Apply text in non-textual content areas such as images, videos etc….
- Keep an eye on the impact of organic results for your website regularly. Always analyze before and after implementing any SEO factors.
- Your code must be simple and clean. If it is vary tidy, it is a setback for your website.
- Instead of targeting homepage for each and every keyword, Create unique page for important keywords and target those pages.
- Get direct links from sites that have same theme as much as possible.
- Make sure your site files and folders were following a hierarchical structure. This will increase the visibility of site to the user and as well the search engines. All files were interlinked and you can avoid orphanage files.
- Search engines won’t crawl script. So make use of CSS more and JavaScript less.
- Be tolerant until you get the result you expect. Good rankings may take more time. Even if you achieve better rankings quickly, it will vanish soon.
- Always keep in your mind that each one connected with your business is possibly a link partner, including your customers, your affiliates and your advertising partners.
- Always read blogs, participate in forums which makes you updated and stands you on top in SEO.
Don’ts
- Do not duplicate your content. Each and every article in website must be unique. Through carelessness you may lead to create duplicate pages. It will always happen in dynamic websites.
- Don’t use parameters in the url. If it is needed, don’t use too many parameters. Always rewrite urls structure using .htaccess.
- Don’t have any 404 page in website. Always create custom 404 pages and redirect dead pages to new pages relevant to that old page.
- Don’t use too much Flash. Search engines will not crawls flash codes. Also it consumes more load time.
- Don’t have many outgoing links (links to other sites).This will drain the link power of your page.
- Never involve in any black-hat SEO techniques that will lead your search engine rankings down.
- Don’t contact vendors for SEO problems and ideas. Their main motto is to advertise a product, not to boost up your rankings in search engines.
- Don’t fear if your rankings went back. Rankings will fluctuate sometimes, and if your rankings did not bounce back quickly, you need to analyze and implement a better strategy.
- Don’t rely on untrustworthy expert advice while selecting keywords for your website. Use data.
The Most Searched Celebrities of the Year 2011 in Bing
Canadian Pop star Justin Bieber was the most queried for person in Microsoft’s Search Engine Bing in the year 2011.
The singer Justin Bieber ranked sixth on the list in 2010 but managed to walk off with top spot from Kim Kardashian in 2011.The major reason could be Justin Beiber’s high profile performances and ongoing My World Tour through Europe, Asia and America.Additional factors could be the release of his second studio album “Under the Mistletoe” and the release of his film “Never Say Never”.
Jennifer Aniston climbed from number 9 in 2010 to number 3 in 2011, while Katy Perry, Jennifer Lopez, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Megan Fox, and Miley Cyrus made their debut on Bing’s most searched-for celebrity list in 2011, replacing many of last year’s top 10 celebrities – Sandra Bullock, Jesse James, Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, Barack Obama and Kate Gosselin.
Top 10 Most Searched Persons in 2011 according to Bing:
1.Justin Bieber
2.Kim Kardashian
3.Jennifer Aniston
4.Lindsay Lohan
5.Jennifer Lopez
6.Britney Spears
7.Katy Perry
8.Megan Fox
9.Lady Gaga
10.Miley Cyrus
Local Business Competition Heating Up – Sign of Things to Come?
Getting your website listed in local listings is becoming one of the latest trends followed by small business owners. The Google mantra has always been think local and that trend sure seems to be catching up.
Adwords showed the start of things to come initially it was just like a classified ad and now Google have made it more sophisticated with a range of features for their clients. The adwords industry is now in a different state where people are ready to hire adwords expert on analyzing the keywords to buy and decide on the rates for them.
Google have been doing their part to upgrade be it the release of adwords express or the free phone support provided for adwords customers. Google are making every effort to make sure that they connect to people who are not exposed to adwords to by guiding and explaining to them about the process.
Google has been encouraging small business owners to post videos on youtube and also have launched a program called “Get your business online”
Social media sites too have taken up ads as a source of revenue. One can see a number of ads in the most popular social network Facebook.
The competition now heats up between social media sites, search engines and other networks. Now local businesses better pull their socks up and get listed online and gain exposure as today without the web your company might be almost invisible and with exposure online your competitors will find you almost invincible.
Finally all local businesses do have a look at this quote
“Three years ago, only 54% of small businesses had websites. Now 82% do”
So what are you waiting for, as Google says “Get your business online”
Ranking after Google Caffeine Index – Panda Update 2.6
Google had started changing its result from Google’s revised indexing process called Caffeine which had put in to work on June 2010 and a new ranking algorithm called Panda Update 2.6 November 2011.
The idea about Caffeine indexing change was to make the Google search index not only as static also more dynamic and produce newer and updated results based on search results. Basically you don’t get the same historic page that not been changed since Adam was a boy. Indexing is quicker and updated pages are displayed faster in the SERP’s.
To couple with this a special Google ranking freshness algorithm which one would think compare the indexed pages on before and after state and give preference to pages that are updated.
This freshness algorithm is going to give particular emphasis on topical and current issues such as news items and sport and things like reviews, recipes and tutorials.
This would be an encouraging method to produce updated quality information. The page rank has also been adjusted noticeably and it will be redistributed to other sites – not sure yet this is also another mini panda update in November or new algorithm part of Panda. But, no doubt that it shakes things up again.
Freshness algorithm with new improvements for ranking algorithms in Google search:
- Snippets : The content from page text in the snippet will be more than the header/menu part in time when Meta descriptions are not given.
- Page Titles : Page title relevancy is increased in importance that provides more emphasis on anchor link text to the page if the page title is relevant to the page.
- Refining official page detection : Better page ranking is given to the pages that are the official source of the search.
- Retiring a signal in Image search : Providing less emphasis on images are referenced by large amount of pages.
- Improvements to date-restricted queries : Refining the efficiency and accuracy of date base results in effective manner.