"Google plans major overhaul to search engine"

It's also the source of many 2nd (and 3rd, 4th) site clickthroughs, so with this change, millions of web sites which may even claim they don't depend on Google will lose traffic as well. Anyone who's serious about online marketing can not brush this off.

It may come to more or less than expected. If Google sticks with the original aim to move more into semantic search - that could be a boon for many site owners and lead back to the "content is king" mantra.

In question is what changes Google might make to its plans in 2012 based on whether calls for a federal investigation result in an investigation being launched.

Wouldn't be the first time Google used a "big change" as cover to back away from previous changes that had raised concerns about its practices or to delete projects that didn't produce as intended.

kay

During the day, I do social media and Internet marketing for a web development company that owns and operates several sites in mainstream niches. These sites are GREAT domains with only one (or two) keywords (and .com extensions) so even if the owner didn't run the sites like a real business and just used them as parked pages, he would still generate 5-6 figures a month easily on affiliate income alone. But he doesn't do that.

He runs each of these sites like real businesses. We have outsourced programmers and writers from in India, Pakistan and the Philippines. We also have an in-house staff of writers, link builders, programmers and marketers.

Since my focus is on social media, I get paid to be on Twitter, Facebook, Mashable and WebProNews all day. We have been monitoring how "social signals" will change how sites are ranked on Google, Bing, Yahoo within the next few years. And I have personally consulted with Eric Ward who I regard as one of the top 3 search engine/link building specialists in the field.

Historically, your search engine rank has been established by Google's algorithm which ranked your site/page on content quality (keyword density, internal link structure, etc.) and the quantity/quality of sites linking to yours. Many sites focus on the site content initially because that's the easiest to do/control, but that will only take you to the second or third page of an extremely competitive niche. To give you an example of extremely competitive, we spend 6 figures a month on Google Ad Words (@$15-20 per click) for just one of our sites in this niche.

What currently takes us to the first page is our link-building efforts. We have an internal staff that works on building relationships with different Webmasters on authority sites.

However, with the introduction of "social signals". This will change significantly. I'm not talking about social media spam/bookmarks that can easily be done with any software like SE Nuke, etc. With things like Google's "Authorship markup", Google +1s and even Klout score, quality will mean so much more than quantity than it has in the past. It will no longer be about how many people are talking about you, it's "who" is talking about you and what is the "context" (i.e. - positive or negative) about what they are saying.

TO SUM IT UP (and this is just a guess on my part):

If the current formula (and no-one knows exactly what it is) for establshing your search engine ranking is:80% Google algorithm (which analyzes the quality of your site) and 20% link building (i.e. - who links to your site), I believe that within the next 2-3 years, it will be 60% (Google algorithm), 25% (Link Building) and 15% (Social Signals).

So, if you're still trying to get into the top 3-5 positions of page one (above the fold) for your search term (and most people don't click on any sites beyond that), if you're not increasing your quality link building and social media relationship-building efforts now, you will be left behind the minute Google or any other engine flips that switch on their engine.

Last, but not least, if you haven't noticed that Google is trying very hard to make you join and use Google+ as your preferred social network, you will when they flip that switch.

Yes really, then why have a SEO subsection.

You could say the same thing about every other sub forum section. The main reason people talk about anything in any of the forum sections (apart from off-topic) is because it's about making money.

I'm not saying that I think this thread belongs in the other section (although I can understand why someone might say it does), but your logic for defending it sucks.

This is the problem

Hey Kurt,

How do you think this will affect search results for local businesses?

I was afraid of that.

Not quite. It's not as if they're going to be scraping passages of text from your web site and displaying them unmodified to visitors and without providing attribution.

Go to Google and type in "how tall is the empire state building".

You'll see something like you'll see below which cannot be attributed to any one specific web site. Google will be displaying more facts like this in response to questions people may have.



I think we're going to see more like this. Nothing wrong with that - using computers to do something they're good at.

I'm with you on this one. If only it were so simple.

Is that even legal? I actually think, and this is totally my opinion, that if they do "scrape" content off a site, they would somehow attribute the source, providing a link to it. They would almost have to, otherwise this would be copyright infringement in many cases.

Not arguing, I think you are right and actually I am guessing that's what this rollout is all about. I just can't imagine how they would just blatantly take content from sites and pawn it off as their own.

This is the "all your base are belong to us" update.

Perhaps Thief.

Well, once Google puts this into action, whats the odds that people leave Google for Yahoo, Bing, AltaVista and w/e else SE there are around?

True.

Just remember that in the non-tech world, however, a SIGNIFICANT percentage of people still type url's in Google's search box.

Google has an impact, even if it might not seem to have an impact to you.

I agree with your post, but I think you are missing the bigger picture here. AS JOutsourcing mentioned in the first page of the thread, the change would affect all levels of sites, not just ones directly being displayed in the search results.

For instance, the media buying platforms you suggest, where do you think the majority of their traffic originates? You guessed it (hopefully), search engines.

The only media buy sites that would not be completely affected by something like this would be large sites that people manually type into the search bar (such as warrior forum).

Which flaws are those?

The ones that relate to them being in business to make a profit?

Or something else?

I asked this exact question earlier in the thread and I'm afraid the answer appears to be yes.

Do you have any inclination how this will affect local search results for small businesses?

Sidewiki.

Wasn't that the biggest bucket of dog turd.

Someone else mentioned something like this earlier and I think you are right. Consumers use Google for only a few seconds. When they find the information they're looking for, then Google looses them to the content, or website.

Google's competitors, on the other hand - Facebook, Yelp, others - keep consumers on their platforms.

The longer Google can keep consumers on a Google web property, the longer that consumer is exposed to ads.

And regarding local...

Too many consumers search local to find a restaurant, salon, contractor, etc. I can't see Google messing with that too much and really, what's the alternative? Yahoo Local? Bing? Google Places is no walk in the park, but in terms of local, Yahoo and Bing are a clusterf***.

As others have said, diversify. You can do that with your local clients for sure in mobile search, Yelp, FB, Daily Deals, online directories and so on...

There are a number of marketers that are taking Analytics off their sites.

But the question is- why don't you want Google looking at your site? are you doing something fishy?

If you're building a solid business (and website), with quality backlinks and proper link velocity, I don't see why having analytics is such a bad thing.