Monday, April 30, 2012

Google AdWords Updates Keyword Tool And Traffic Estimator!


Google AdWords has made some tweaks in the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator. The standalone Traffic Estimator has been retired and with the Keyword Tool changes, advertisers can now see keyword ideas with themes related to their keyword.

The tool will help you with keyword ideas and you can choose to add ad groups directly to your accounts.  For example, people searching for ‘shoes’ might see an idea for a ‘sports shoe’ group which will have keywords such as- ‘sports shoes for men’. AdWords has also integrated the Keyword Tool with the Traffic Estimator. This allows the advertisers to easily see traffic estimates for the chosen keywords.

KW Tool

The changes made in the Traffic Estimator now require that it will be made available only to advertisers logged into their AdWords accounts. This way, the estimator will use every account’s performance history to show its traffic estimates. Google has also added the ability to graph performance estimates to Traffic Estimators. This allows advertisers to determine the best suited bidding strategy. As per Google, the additional changes made include, “You can now create draft ad groups within the Traffic Estimator and easily view traffic and bid estimates for each of your draft ad groups. When you’re satisfied with your campaign structure, you can add the draft campaign directly to your account.”

This is the next change introduced in AdWords, after the recent updates in the AdWords Quality Score features.

Source: www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/google-adwords-updates-keyword-tool-traffic-estimator/13614

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Google’s New Algorithm Change to Target Webspam!


Google wants to give users a better surfing experience with relevant and high quality sites displayed on search results. With the Panda Algorithm changes, Google went on a cleaning spree to weed out low quality sites with poor content and of no use to the users. Then the search engine came up with a page layout algorithm earlier this year that pulls down the sites where there is not much content available “above the fold.”

Now Google is planning to launch an important algorithm change that will target webspam. So sites with poor quality/keyword stuffed content/link schemes, and generally not living up to Google’s existing quality guidelines will be hit. As Google says, “We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can't divulge specific signals because we don't want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”

Google’s Target-Webspam

Google has defined Webspam as the ‘black hat’ tactics used to get higher rankings with activities like: keyword stuffing, link schemes, “doorway” pages, cloaking and duplicate content (knowingly copied). So, if you have a site with keyword stuffed content you are most likely to be taken down by Google. Google’s new algorithm change will also weed out sites with unusual linking patterns, and unrelated content.

Webspam

Google has said that this algorithm tweak will go live for all languages at the same time. And the sites Google believes that are “engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings” will be hit.

Impact of the algorithm change

Google has said that this algorithm will impact:
  • 3.1% of English queries
  • 3% of German, Chinese and Arabic
  • 5% of Polish queries
White Hat SEO encouraged by Google

Google has again cautioned webmasters to stay away from spamming and indulge in white hat search engine optimization, to create high quality web sites. As Google has said, “Google has said before that search engine optimization, or SEO, can be positive and constructive – and we're not the only ones. Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to find.“White hat” search engine optimizers often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines.”

How do you plan to deal with this new algorithmic change? Do you think you are safe? Do share your views.

Winners and Losers of the Panda 3.5 Update!


Matt Cutts mentioned in a tweet about a Panda update that was rolled on the 19th of April. And then Google announced yesterday about a change in search algorithm to combat webspam. Searchmetrics put out a list of winners and losers of the Webspam update.

But Matt Cutts has clarified that the sites shown to have been affected by the Webspam in the Searchmetrics list have had little or no impact due to the Webspam update. It is the Panda 3.5 in play, which rolled out on April 19th which is responsible for the lost or gained search rankings of these sites.

The winners of the update are sites like Spotify, Menshealth, Observer and The Verge. The biggest losers include Cult Of Mac, Techdirt and Digg.

The Winners are:

News sites of the big brands have gained from the Panda 3.5 refresh. The names include Spotify, The New York Observer, NME, Men’s Health, Poynter, and Marvel. This list of sites that gained better visibility is based on a study of 50,000 keywords, for 5 million domains, in the first 100 results compared to last week.

Winners- Panda 3.5 

The Losers are:

The sites that lost their rankings have been observed to have been those that used databases to amass information, press portals and sites with heavy templates.
 
Losers- Panda 3.5 

Search experts are approaching this list with caution, because the data is of last week, and it was during that time only that webmasters reported of sudden drops. These were later found to be due to a problem in Google’s parked domain classifier.

The webspam update has been rolled out but the Panda 3.5 came before that, so if you have seen a drop in your rankings then you have been hit by the Panda. If the rankings are up- you have been rewarded!

Source: http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/winners-losers-panda-35-update/13554

  




Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Larry Page Reveals His Plans for the Company in – Google 2012 Update!

Google CEO Larry Page has entered the second year of heading the search engine giant and threw light on his plans for the company’s future in his address- Google 2012 Update.

The 2012 Update from the CEO report states that the company would work on their agenda of integrating search with other Google products while making search simpler. Larry Page, the company’s co-founder revealed that Google aims to bring all the platforms (especially Google+) together so that everything is seamlessly joined for people to easily switch between services and do stuff without having to move to other sites.