February 29th, 2012

Search Quality Has Improved: Google Makes 40 Updates in February 2012

Google is always tweaking their processes to bring forth better search results for users and they recently announced in a blog post that 40 search updates were implemented for the month of February. That’s right, 40 in one month! This marks a new record for Google for their monthly series on search quality.

Google claims to be continuously trying to make small improvements to every aspect of their systems including related searches, autocomplete, sitelinks, indexing, synonyms, UI elements, and much more. “Each individual change is subtle and important, and over time they add up to a radically improved search engine,” says Google. You can see the complete list of Google’s updates on their blog, but here are some that caught my attention.

Link Evaluation

Google claims to have changed the way in which they evaluate links by turning off a method of link analysis they’ve been using for several years. Sad, but true, and I believe they just broke the hearts of every search marketing firm in the world. Just when we got close, they switch things around! Google claims it was necessary to re-architect certain parts of their scoring in order to maintain a clean and understandable system. Google won’t give specifics on any new link evaluation signals or any more information on the one they turned off, but that’s okay Google, we’ll recover!

Local Search Rankings

Along with the link evaluation signal, Google’s post says local results are being improved because of a “new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably.” Google has improved the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of their main search results as a signal. They’re now more capable of detecting when both queries and documents are local to the user.

More Local Relevant Predictions in YouTube

When it comes to the ranking for predictions in YouTube, Google wants to provide more locally relevant queries. In Google’s blog post, they use Lady Gaga as an example. The query “Lady Gaga in” would typically generate a variety of different predictions. Now, if that query is entered on the US version of YouTube, Google may predict “Lady Gaga in Times Square,” but if the query is performed on the Indian version of YouTube, you may see “Lady Gaga in India.” Don’t worry little monsters, Google will still bring you Gaga videos, only they’ll be from a town near you!

Now I know you don’t have all day, so here are some other updates you may want to know about…
“Site:” Query Update: Google improves the ranking for queries that use the “site:” operator by increasing the diversity of results.

Expanding the Size of Image Index in Universal Search: Google expanded the collection of image results that are shown in Universal Search.

International Launch of Shopping Rich Snippets: These snippets help users identify shopping sites that have the most relevant products according to the user’s needs. They typically display product prices, availability, reviews and ratings, etc. and for a while were only available in the United States, Germany and Japan. Google has changed that and shopping rich snippets have gone global!

In addition to these 40 updates, Google has also confirmed the Panda 3.3 update. Google isn’t saying much about the update, other than it refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.

As you can see, Google has been very busy this past month and with all of these updates at once, I’m sure some discussion will occur. Share your thoughts with Web Talent Marketing on Facebook or Tweet us @socialmediafirm.

Published by Mike Canarelli on February 29th, 2012 in General Information, Uncategorized

February 20th, 2012

Web Talent Does LA

The Beverly Web-billies. Web-deo Drive. Webbywood.

There is no doubt that Web Talent Marketing is a team full of high-flying, low-brow, rankings butt-kickers, and dang proud too. On a recent excursion to the city of angels Mike, Oliver & Miki uncovered many treasures, great and small, but none more valuable than a gold-mine known as Sire’s Crown Eyewear.

Take what you think you know about sunglasses and toss it out the window (or, if you are Mike, you drop it off the side of a boat). Sire’s cant really even be considered sunglasses. They are much better than such a commonly used title. They are better known as Eco Wood Eyewear. Hand-carved wooden frames made from a wide assortment of exotic woods from across the globe, including Koa from Hawaii, makes for one light-weight, durable, and flexible pair of peepers.

The gents who run this crafty enterprise are a rag-tag team of 20-something entrepreneurs doing their best to kick down the doors of LA’s creative industry and get their foot in the door of some pretty amazing brick-and-mortar businesses across the world, such as Harrod’s in London.

The coolest part of the buying experience was getting to walk through their Downtown Los Angeles studio space overlooking the entire city and the historic KRKD radio towers, which ran over the airwaves from 1932-1975.

And, while the price point is well beyond what you would find at the carts in your local shopping mall, according to co-owner/optician Chris Erven, they come with a “getting laid satisfaction guarantee”. These babies, therefore, are worth their weight in gold.

So, if you are from the Golden State or get a day to spend out there, take a walk on the wild side and head downtown to the Sire’s Crown showroom. Luckily, they have concrete floors making it all the easier to clean up after this eyewear blows your mind.

 

While we had an amazingly good time in LA, its really great to be back home again. First day back at work, this is what we are greeted with:

Published by Miki DeHaven on February 20th, 2012 in Uncategorized