Assume you have a site that offers Product X and related services. A particular sector of the online population will go to search engines and use Product X or one of the related services as a keyword for their search. Having a Web site and its link at the top of the search engine when this target group searches is your goal. This could mean significant traffic to your site and consequently, significant income for you.

Link building is both a science and an art. There are proven ways to make these connections work without wasting a lot of time and money getting onto every list available. Search engines are important but that the process must be optimized. This means you have to do what it takes to make your site and your links available to the correct group of people.

This very well may be a manual manipulation of results, which also doesn’t make sense since several big brand names are missing from the results still.

These new results, if they stick, mean that large established brands do not have to do SEO, do not have to follow Google’s ever complicated rules about new fresh content, about minimizing flash, about proper tags, about duplicate content. They do not have to spend any money or time on SEO like the rest of the world.  It is frustrating enough for webmasters that they cannot simply make a useful site for their business, they must hire an SEO who knows what is right/wrong, or spend hours a week keeping up with the guidelines.  Now companies that are not even their direct competitors will outrank them without doing any SEO at all.

And the user is show results that they may not have even been looking for.

Several issues to ponder and analyze:

First, why the change? Google’s goal is to produce useful results, and by making this change, google is assuming that that when a user searches the term “laptops”, they should see a list of the manufacturers of these items, the largest companies.  It could be that Apple and Dell and HP were not optimizing their sites according to Google’s complex rules, maybe suffering from duplicate content issues or a plethora of other issues that keeping them from ranking higher. So Google is giving them an artificial boost because they decided they should show up in the top 10? On one hand, this is logical, as I debate with John that the masses do expect to see Yellow Page type results, with the most popular well known companies up top. However several manufacturers are not making an appearance, where is Sony and Lenovo?

But why is Google assuming that a search for a generic term is a search for the large producers of that item, not sellers or researchers or reviewers.  When someone searches for laptops, they very well may want the manufacturers, or they may be shopping, or they may be trying to learn about laptops. With a broad term, could be anything, and if they do not see the results they want, they will get more specific on subsequent searches. For this reason, the broadest term, laptops, should still be a mix of the most relevant sites, from sellers to reviewers to government pages, encouraging the user to employ a more specific term.

More importantly, how is this being done? Is it manual or algorithmic? Which weighting factor changed to show these dramatic result changes? We have a couple theories. Although there is some buzz about site traffic factoring in to the algo, this is most likely a longshot as it is a self fulfilling prophecy, as higher ranked sites get more traffic. It is possible that Google is devaluing the anchor text of inbound links.

And even more importantly, how would this change the face of search? Although initially there would be an uproar and traffic issue from sites previously in the top 10, like the laptop sellers above who are now on page 2, a searcher that is actually shopping for a laptop in theory should perform a 2nd more specific search. However the problem is that Apple and Dell are also retailers of their own product, so this artificial manipulation shows favoritism in a way.  Google has now determined that Dell is a more important result for a laptop shopper than a site that sells many other brands, possibly for less.  A shopper sees only the manufacturers of the item, and does not see the plethora of very large laptop sellers.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out, if it will be vertical specific, if users will be happy or unhappy with this change, and how SEOs will adapt.

Yesterday morning around 11am I noticed these completely different search results on my laptop. I guess Google was using mobile search as a test bed for some serious changes to their algorithm.

Google’s old search results (have basically been like this for about 4-5 months) for the query “laptops”: (click image for larger)

The new results, click image for larger:

The new results look like the yellow pages, we search for laptops and we see Dell, Toshiba, HP. These results look nearly identical to the PPC results, could it be they are influenced by the Pay Per click results?

Google is definitely determining the results differently, possibly hand auditing the search results for major search queries? Giving some added value to manufacturers? Possibly devaluing the anchor text of incoming links? Unclear, but we have noticed this in multiple verticals; it is widespread, Google now placing household names in the top spots. I personally don’t want to see the same results as Yellow Pages.
In addition does Google not realize that by gifting Dell, Lenovo, HP the top spots in natural search results that these guys are going to figure out that they can therefore reduce their spending on PPC? The BIG boys do not look for an ROI on PPC, they use it for branding not profitability.  So when they see Google helping them with their branding for free, the cost per click should drop swiftly.
Man, Google the leaders of the new world, have taken us back to 1985….Geez we all may as simply go to http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Hardware/Systems/
Bring back DMOZ, let some person determine what we want to see…
Regardless, SEO Moves is quickly researching and testing everything possible to figure out what Google has done with these changes, we will have the answers shortly and our customers worldwide will be right back in the driver’s seats.

In general I understand why Wikipedia’s natural search rankings are so powerful, because they have a tremendous about of links, they have links from nearly every single corner of the universe. Although I also think that this is an evil part of Google’s plan to mess with the natural search results, by allowing Wikipedia to rank so high for nearly every single search term on earth, they basically eliminate the opportunity for most small business’s to even attempt to attain top rankings, as it is a massive task to out rank Wikipedia for anything.

The question is if Google is really concerned with the user experience, then why would anyone searching for say laptops, want to see Wikipedia? Does that query result in many people who want to know definition of what a laptop is? I think not. The funniest one is the 100% default natural search engine result of number 1 for search engine optimization, the one and only Wikipedia.  I really believe that this is/was part of Google’s strategy, to mix up natural search, but I also think that they are hurting the user experience.

Now if one has the seo budget you can certainly outrank Wikpedia, but it does not come cheap, you probably need to be spending in excess of $10K per month to build an SEO program to our ranking the all mighty Wikipedia. So if when you do a search query for your top keywords, if you see Wikipedia above you know that it is going to be a long road to surpass the o Mighty Wikipedia.

Neato, customize your search results, Well wait a minute, are these search results? Well yes I searched for something I was in need of, wanted information about or wanted to see, hear or watch. Wait a minute, why would I want to customize the results? Maybe if I constantly searched for the same queries over and over (would this not mean that I was insane?)? But why would I do this? If I searched for the same thing multiple times, one could assume I would not need to search, because I would already know what the search results were, and could simply type in the url of the website in which I wanted to go to. So from the standpoint of common sense, it makes very little.

Next up add your own websites to the results? Is this new? Sounds like a Google Bookmark, except unless you remember what query you searched for originally your not going to be able to find the website again, where is if i simply bookmark the website, I can go back to that website at anytime, without having to remember what that specific query I made was so I can see that website I added to my search results.

Commenting on a website, and making this comment public, well here comes the spam, and what on earth would make me want to see the comments of every idiot on earth anyway? In the time it would take me to read 200-300 comments, could I not just go to the website and form my own opinion?

Wait Google I removed a website from my customized search queries, how do I get it back?

OK Google I do not want to see or use your searchwiki, do I have to? Yes there is currently no way to not see the Google searchwiki while logged in to your Google account. So there is no opt out ability. I guess Google knows us better then we do, and they are forcing the public to Google as Google see fit.

Google is apparently going down the same lonely road as Excite, Alta Vista, Yahoo among others, they are taking a good thing and making it suck.

Google what do your users want? I want a clean page with a search box and button and a fast query, after that I want to see 10 search results (websites), and I want those results to be great.

I did think of one very good use for the searchwiki, can I remove all the fluff your shoving in front of me? I would like to X out (remove) all the PPC ads, the youtube vides, the books and blog results. Could you arrange this for me Google?

Plain and simple.

What is Google thinking? Over the last several years Google has taken the award winning formula of a plain simple webpage with clear understandable quality results, and proceeded to make these the exact opposite. A query on Google now is rapidly becoming a labyrinth of conflicting information. This began when they started to put pay per click ads in their results (this of course we understand as they needed to make money) and with this they clearly displayed what results were naturally earned and which results were PAID.

Lately Google has been changing everything.  In the past few months, they have started displaying news results, Video Results, Book Results and Blog post results. This has really started to clutter things up, a person who searches “medical insurance” is now offered medical insurance news, which although potentially helpful, is not what I searched for. If this is what I wanted to see then I would click on the news search or I would search for medical insurance news. Then I am now blessed with a video on medical insurance, hmmm, well not sure but if I wanted to watch the health channel, I would turn my TV on. Then as we proceed to the bottom of the page we are now offered the opportunity to read a blog post or buy a book? I guess Google assumes now that when I selected my search query, I did not really know what I wanted? Well Google I knew what I wanted, and you do not!

Now most search queries on Google offer us the opportunity to see 50% of what we are actually looking for, and 50% of what Google has decided that we need to see.

Google SearchWiki is now added an entire new level to the clutter and confusion offered to the average internet user.  I am not sure if Google does market surveys and user studies, but I am willing to bet that 80% of users, have no interest in this new tool, and I bet that 75% of user have no clue what to do with this tool and will never even use it.

This is no longer the simple clear quality search results that made Google dominate search, and this leads me to my theory that this will be the downfall of Google in the long run.

Once logged into your Google account you will see an up arrow and an X. If you click on the up arrow you will be increasing the search results for a particular website within “your” (once logged in) search results. If you click on the X you will remove that listing from “your” Google Search Results.

This adds a whole new spin to your Google Search Results, you can customize your results to be what you want them to be. Now this appears handy from the outside, but how many people consistently make then same search query time and again, to the point where they would want to customize the results? I am not sure, but what this will certainly accomplish is people who see really bad websites that do not belong in the result will certainly get nailed out of the results.

I personally nailed a few spam website that did not belong, but after I did this I wondered, where did they go? to Google Jail? Well to late because I have no idea how to get a site back once you click the X, and I guess I need to read about how to get websites back that you mistakenly removed from your search query results? I bet Google is going to get A TON of emails asking this same thing

In addition to this down in the bottom of the search results you will find a few links, one is ‘add a website’, which could be a way to submit a website, or possibly just another opportunity to customize your results. You will find a ‘see my search wiki notes’, which is a way for your to make notes or comments about websites in the search results. And a link for see all notes, which if you click this you are going to see some crazy posts about every website, and this appears to be a function Google is going to remove from this new tool as quickly as they added it, as this will rapidly become the place for spammers to really spam. I can see the Viagra posts already

It is late, and I have been playing, I just wanted to make everyone aware of this new twist Google added to search.

I think Google is using this mostly as a way to monitor their results and will probably track all the results to manually adjust their algorithm in the coming months.

Search Engine Optimization for newbies: Google SEO Starter Guide