search engine
Average Search Position Metric Recalculated by Google
There has been changes made on how Google calculates average position metric.In an attempt to provide more accuracy to the rankings,the way of calculating average position in Google Webmaster Tools Top Search Queries and Google Analytics has undergone some changes.
This is a sample Google has put forward to understand about the changes it has made to average ranking position of pages in a site.
“Let’s say Adam searched for [blue berries] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 3, 6, and 12. Richard also searched for [blue berries] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 5 and 9. Previously, we would have averaged all these positions together and shown an Average Position of 7. Going forward, we’ll only average the highest position your site appeared in for each search (3 for Adam’s search and 5 for Richard’s search), for an Average Position of 4.” There won’t be any changes made to historical data.
Google Launches One Privacy Policy for All
A new master privacy policy and terms of service was announced by Google in it’s official blog.The users will be notified about the new changes in the coming days.The new terms of service and privacy policy will take effect on March 1.
Instead of 70 privacy documents,Google has created one privacy document to govern all it’s products.Google can pull information from one service and deliver it to you through other Google product you use.
Individual search has become more customized and this has brought a wonderful opportunity for the advertisers to reach their targeted audience.
Check out this video on Google’s Privacy Policy Update
These new changes from Google aslo helps them to make more revenue. It will result in better search results and ads. Google made sure that it will never sell user information and it still promotes data liberation. Google received a fare share of criticism for the changes in in it’s privacy policy in previous years.
Punctuation Marks and Symbols in Google Search Results
Another update from Google on it’s search results and now you can see results for punctuation marks and symbols.Searching for the symbol equivalent of a percent sign,comma,carat and more symbols will return search results but the results are not exactly relevant.
Wikipedia page ranks as the top link for for the following punctuation marks.
- ^ (caret)
- ( ) { } [ ] (bracket) – parentheses, brackets and curly brackets are all combined into the same search result
- ~ (tilde)
- | (vertical bar)
- “ (quotation marks)
- < (less-than sign) > (greater-than sign)
- $ (dollar sign)
- . (full stop/period)
- , (comma)
- : (colon) – however, the colon that is a piece of the large intestine currently outranks the punctuation mark of the same name
- ; (semicolon)
- # (number sign)
- % (percent sign)
- @ (at sign)
These punctuation marks in Yahoo and Bing diplays “No results found” to the user.
Ability to Block Search Results Will Return
When Search Plus Your World was launched by Google a few days back it also marked the exit of ability to block web sites from search results. Google says the feature will return back but the timing was not disclosed.
How Blocking Worked
Previously the results contain a “Block All” link that appeared below them. Selecting this option will not display pages in the search results of the site you blocked. This option no longer appears.
Return of Blocking Will Take “Some Time”
The feature has been dropped earlier this week and Google told they are working on a fix.Search Plus Your World is still in the process of being rolled out. It’s only a short term problem and and it might take some time.
Response to Relevancy Complaints
The blocking site feature was released last February that allowed users to block sites only if they used Google Chrome. A lot of criticisms were made on Google that their relevancy had decreased to a great extent. Google have also addressed regarding this issue in their official blog.The ability to block sites, along with Google’s Panda Update, were part of that response.
Twitter criticizes Google On the Update
Google has received criticism from Twitter on it’s major search update that was unveiled on Tuesday. Twitter claimed that it’s totally “bad” for web users as the update has made it harder for the users to find information.
The recent update Search Plus Your World allows Google to show results in SERP from it’s social networking platform in order to offer a personalized search experience for the users.
Twitter in a statement told that latest enhancements will not help the search engine giant when it comes to providing real time personalized information within its search results.
The statement said “Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant (search) results,” .”We’re concerned that, as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”
Alex Macgillivray tweeted that ” the update from Google is a bad day for internet”.Both Google and Twitter are battling for dominance in the social market which is currently headed by Facebook.
Search Plus Your World launched by Google
Come 2012 and Google has introduced quite a lot of features thats going to bring clarity to many features they have made over the past few months.These changes include the creation of their own social media network and implementation of SSL search. Over the next few days in Google.com you will be witnessing their new change called “Search Plus Your World”.
The new feature will bring results from Google+ in the search results at the click of a button.The results include People,Pages and Profiles that are fully integrated into search results.
When personalization icon is clicked for a search query it pulls out posts and pictures from their friends circle into their search results.Already in the search results Google + posts have began to outperform the original content. The new icon personalizes the search results to those within the user’s network that includes even the content shared privately.
The results does not show anything related to Facebook or Twiiter and this helps Google+ to promote their social network.Regarding this Amit Singhal said “Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service. Of course, going forward, if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”
Check out this video to know more about Search, plus Your World
Google+ Brand Pages Showing in Search Results
Out of world’s top 100 brands,77 have Google+ brand page.According to Bright Edge there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of fans adding their favorite brands to their circles and this amounts to 222,000 fans.
There are 300 million fans for the same brand on Facebook compared to 148,000 on Google +. Brands like IBM,Vodafone and Google have a Google+ page but not an official Facebook page.
The social and search channel gap in Google is closing up as Google is embedding popular product with it’s dominant search marketing position. The brands need to address both channels and it’s now their choice to extend their social presence from Facebook to Google+.
Brands are now offering incentives to include one of their pages as part of their search and social strategy such as the inclusion of Google+ pages in primary search results.There has also been a speculation around this move that it could lead google to anti trust woes.
Including Google+ pages in the search results is a smart move by Google and a recent survey found that Google,Yahoo contributes 34 percent of Facebook fan page referrals.A few questions like whether this could abuse Google’s dominant position in the market if it still contributes further remains to seen.
Author Stats added to Webmaster Tools
A new report named “Author Stats” has been introduced by Google recently. Google search results page will contain how often your page is showing up and this will be available under section called “labs” in Webmaster tools. When the content is associated with the Google,the impressions and clicks of the stories will be shown.
In case if you find any issues,you can mail them at authorship-pilot@google.com. More by link has also been added in the search results by Google
New Shiny API in Google Analytics
New features have been unrolling in Google Analytics since August when version 3 was launched.Google Analytics was in need of a new API and now developers have delivered it.
Data Export API has now been replaced by Google Analytics Core Reporting API which is right now the hot cake for Google Analytics Developers. The current Analytics API is both the continuation of the previous API and not to mention the Javascript Client Library which is currently in Alpha.
The two versions that are currently available in Core Reporting API are Version 2.4 and Version 3.0. The latter version contains new libraries for languages like PHP, Ruby and Python whereas former version is legacy release to maintain compatibility with the previous versions.
Significant changes are available in version 3.0 PAPI starting with authentication through the OAuth 2.0 format, but also in the use of JSON(Javascript for Object Notation) format for data output and absolutely no backwards compatibility with the previous version 2.3. The API team recommends the developers to migrate to 3.0 version.
If custom apps or interfaces are developed using 2.3 API,it needs to be updated within 6 months. Data Export API,XML requests and configuration will not be available at that time.
JSON(Javascript Object Notation) will be replacing XML as the preferred format for returning data.The new features will continue to roll out in 2012 as announced by Google and developers will be working on the API to make the new features more accessible.
Schemer Project and Activity Finder launched by Google
Content sharing tool has been introduced by Google which helps about finding new things in the real world.The new project allows the visitors to share,create and track progress for goals, activities and adventures.
Google has launched the project on a invite only basis and it would be a real world activity sharing site. Check this introduction part in Schemer Google+ page.
Whether it’s exploring a new city, checking out a friend’s movie recommendations, or just finding new activities for your weekends, Schemer lets you discover new things to do, share schemes with friends, and make the most of your day.
Even though a invite is needed,Google provided links will get you into Schemer.Search for the activities based on keywords, interest,location or category.Check out recent and popular posts.
You can mark the schemes you have done,track the schemes and even share your plans.Within a few clicks you can able create,label and describe the scheme of your own
You can also hare the content via Google + or through mail.You can also connect with other schemers via Google +