WHAT IT MEANS: GOOGLE'S LATEST SEARCH ENGINE ALGORITHM CHANGES

Google has confirmed to Search Engine Land that on Thursday, September 27th, they released a Panda algorithm update. People who are into Search Engine stuff will quickly know that Panda is Google's Search Engine algorithm. This is Google's 20th Panda update and that is the reason it has been called Panda 20. As per the search engine specialists Panda 20 is a major update that impacts 2.4% of English search queries on the Google Search Engine. The exact impact and the type of queries or websites impacted are yet to monitored. Let's see what it brings up in few days.

Panda updates are mostly run by Google to better the quality of its search results. Only a couple of days before rolling the Panda 20, Google dropped the "Low Quality" exact match domains from search results. What it means is- earlier if people would search "let's go and buy bananas", the domain names similar to that of the search query would appear in the top results despite their content quality. For instance in this ("let's go and buy bananas") example: "www.gobuybananas.com" appeared in top results. So, you see basically those domains were tricking you on to their sites on the basis of your search queries by first fooling the Google Search Engine and then of course you. Google confirmed that new exact-match domain (EMD) algorithm affected 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree and was unrelated to Panda update.

Another important update on the Google Search Engine is- nowadays you will be noticing Google showing 7 (organic) search results on the first page for many searches, instead of the usual 10. So, where are those 3 more search results? Well, instead of those 3 search results, Google is showing sponsored or ads related to keywords links. For example, search for "making money" which will show you just 7 (organic) search results and 3 sponsored ads related links on the first page of the Google Search Engine. If you do the match it's equal to approximately 30% reduction of organics search results. So again, what does it really means?

Many will feel that- Google is chipping away at organic search results to drive buyers to paid listings, and soon, the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will become irrelevant, but the reality is showing 10 to 7 organic responses on the home page isn't exactly eating up the organic results. 

Let dig deep- Google still shows the paid searches very distinguishably such as in the form of "ads related to the keyword"(highlighted in a different color), rest all the response (in this case 7 of them) are still organic. People are smart enough or let me say Google is letting people know what are paid results and what are organic results. Till the time Google doesn't confuses a user between the paid vs the organic searches it's fair and square. A Search Engine survey showed that most people ignore ads once they understand the meaning of it...all they look for is organic responses!! Hence, having 7 results out of 10 on the first page isn't that bad when u know now that on the next page u have the next best organic responses.

From a Search Engine Optimization companies' perspective showing 7 organic results is a really dull move by Google. Let's say if you are trying to rank for a certain keyword on the search engine, there are now 30% less chances of landing on the first page, and as per the current trends we know that users rarely click through to page 2 or 3. Hence, the only other way to land on the first page will be is to buy an ad.

Having said that if Google tends to focus more on paid ads and less on organic searches, we will soon monitor the shift in users' behavior, which could be in the form of improvement of click through to page 2 from 1....Things are evolving, and these changes may put businesses in an iffy-giffy frame of mind for at least the limited period of time till the users understand the meaning of what has been brought by the search engine on their screens. Still, the bottom line is- Google or for that matter any search engine company have to align itself to the customer behavior than vice-versa. Hence, it will be wise to have your content or SEO strategy more aligned towards the user behavior than the Search Engine Algorithmic changes, yes there will be always slight alterations, but nothing can stop a business if it has unique original content along with high traffic on the website.  

INTERNET SEARCHES ARE SEO RICH THAN ACTUAL RESULTS

Few years back, I never thought that life will be so easy and I never imagined that almost everything I could ever think of will be available on my 15 inch screen, which I have been using for so long for playing games and listening music. Yes, the internet world has revolutionized and it has made everything just a click away. I must confess that I was never as lazy as I m today but Internet has certainly made the life simpler. I know life has got better but there are side-effects associated to almost all great things and Internet is at no spare.

Frankly speaking, the Internet revolution was so exciting and scintillating initially, when almost everyday one or the other service was transforming to the new so called “E-way” (Electronic-way), it triggered the life to completely a new avtar with easy access and less labor but at the same time it also catalyzed the chain reaction, which has made everything available on the Internet in abundance. Yes, as the Internet has grown all these years, the resources on the Internet have multiplied at lightening speeds and that have started causing confusions. Don’t you feel it? Ok, let me just explain you how.

Since, the day I bought my first digital camera I became passionate about photography and more recently, I have realized the need of a new better digital camera and a cell phone (with camera). I decided to search for these items on the Internet so that I can buy them. One fine day, I started searching for my ideal digital camera and a cell phone (with camera) but without any surprise all the searches on the internet gave me far too many results. After surfing through the top 5 results, I realized that none was near to what I was looking for. As I m a bit familiar with the SEO stuff, I soon realized that those searches were showing me the best SEO rich results not the actual best results what I was looking for, preferably shopping site where I can buy those things, this is exactly where Internet has become confusing, I know it has hell lot of links to what I m thinking to shop online but the thing what I preferably want was not SEO rich. Wooof…..what a confusion!!

Anyway, I started surfing back with the blank mind and soon found a website-Shopwiki.com, which was having the stuff I was searching for hours on the Internet. The best part was that it had almost all the electronics stuff including the things I was searching for on a website, which had e-stores listings from all across the internet. This website was showing probably all the stores available on the internet and that too minus the other SEO rich stuff, which a normal search engine query will show, Oh finally it was a relief for me but I also started thinking that since the internet has become so vast that it’s the need of the hour if we can have the bifurcations of some sorts and websites for all other categories similar to what I found for the various items like electronics on Shopwiki.com. Possibly we need more of such websites as a new solution, which could be implemented for the ever extending Internet with so many resources. I hope that we may have more of such websites as it will finally reduce some confusion, and make our life easier and less SEO based.