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Say what you will about Google, but they know how to come up with quirky names for their algorithm updates. Previously, we have discussed the Panda update and the Venice update. Today we turn our attention to the latest update to gain significant attention from web designers and SEO specialists – the Google Penguin update (this was originally known as the webspam update).

While it isn’t yet entirely clear what the update will do, it seems certain to say that it is targeted at quality – or rather, weeding out sites that are in violation of Google’s quality guidelines in order to help sites that utilise good SEO techniques get better page rankings. The Google post outlining the upcoming Penguin algorithm change offers a couple of examples of the kind of pages that might be affected by the change.

That post also offers a useful explanation of what Google perceives to be the difference between good and bad SEO. The terms it uses for this are “white hat” SEO and “black hat webspam”. In brief, white hat SEO is defined as SEO that helps to improve a user’s experience of a website. It is to do with good content as well as good marketing techniques in order to build the profile of a site, according to Google.

By contrast, black hat webspam is defined as SEO techniques that don’t actually benefit users. For example, sites that include keyword links that aren’t actually relevant to the content in question, or keyword stuffing on a site that has got generally poor-quality content.

Google also helpfully offers some information to give us an idea of the number of searches that are likely to be affected by the Penguin update. It isn’t expected to have as significant an impact as the previous Panda update that helped to promote good quality sites, but it should still make a difference. It’s thought that just over 3% of English searches will be impacted.

So, even though most sites should be perfectly fine following the Google Penguin update and could even receive a boost as poor quality sites are weeded out, it still makes sense to review your web content to ensure it falls within the quality guidelines. There are a few different areas you can look at to make sure your site is properly promoted with white hat SEO.

For example, ensuring you don’t have duplicate content on your site is an issue we’ve looked at before as a result of previous Google updates, but if you still have any content that could be considered as duplicate, it could be worth reviewing this. In theory, duplicate content doesn’t automatically get you a search penalty unless it can be proved that you were trying to manipulate the search rankings, but generally speaking, it isn’t worth taking the chance.

Keyword stuffing is another issue that Google mentions in its blogpost on the update, so this something else you might want to look at to ensure your site falls within the quality guidelines. This isn’t just about ensuring your visible content utilises keywords properly; any hidden text on your website also matters and could lead to you being penalised in the search rankings if you have engaged in any keyword stuffing. If your site has been loaded with keywords for the express purpose of doing well in the search rankings even though the user experience isn’t as good as it could be, now is a very good time to review that practice.

Google also mentions links in its Penguin algorithm post. In its guidelines, it warns against linking to webspammers or what it refers to as ‘bad neighbourhoods’, so this is something to watch out for on your site. The examples given in the post linked above include that of an article ostensibly about getting fit but with keyword links for payday loans. This might seem like an obvious no-no, but it’s clearly something to be careful about as this sort of technique can be much more subtle.

Overall, the message from Google clearly seems to be that good content will be prioritised and that those websites utilising white hat SEO should not be pushed out or penalised by sites attempting to manipulate the search rankings. While most sites should have nothing to fear from the Penguin update, it’s still a timely reminder that it’s worth reviewing our content from time to time to ensure it is still as high quality and beneficial to our users as we initially intended it to be.

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Something all web designers and SEO specialists need to be aware of is the Google Venice update. This is an update that was included in a series of algorithm changes that Google announced towards the end of February 2012, but the effects of it are just starting to become clear. You can read the full list of algorithm changes that make up the update here.

Google Venice itself is actually number 26 on that list of around 40 algorithm changes and the idea behind it is to improve the rankings of local search results. This is the explanation that is offered by Google:

“Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.”

This basically means that if you search for something, the results you get off Google will be much more personalised to your location. For example, if you search for ‘web designers’, you should hopefully see results from web designers that are local to you (e.g. ‘web designers london’), because Google is now utilising IP addresses to work out where you are and provide you with results accordingly.

This has several implications for businesses that we need to be aware of. First of all, this has the potential to benefit local businesses that have previously been disadvantaged by larger firms in terms of their SEO. If local businesses are able to optimise their sites for local search terms, they could potentially do quite well out of Google Venice.

However, as well as the benefits, it also throws up a couple of challenges. For instance, businesses that are based in one location but who carry out work in lots of locations will face a dilemma as to what they should optimise and how. As an example, as a web design firm, we can often just as easily design a website for a company in Scotland as we can in London because we’re able to work virtually. Does this mean we need to optimise separate pages for every location we work in?

The full impact of Google Venice is yet to be determined, but for such a significant update it hasn’t actually yet been analysed that extensively.

One issue that does seem to have come up, though, is that if you live in a place that shares its name with somewhere else (Birmingham UK and Birmingham Alabama, for instance), there is a chance that Google will pick the wrong place because even though websites are based in different countries, they’re optimised for the same place names. This doesn’t seem to be an extensive problem, but it’s something that many businesses will need to be aware of.

What is clear from the Google Venice update is that local search is now really entering its own and every business needs to start developing a plan to deal with it to make sure they stay properly optimised and take advantages of the opportunities the algorithm change has to offer. For example, developing localised page content or local landing pages can help firms to optimise the areas they want to target. You’ll only be able to make use of the Google Places feature if you actually have a physical address in a certain place, but if you are based in one place yet work in many, there’s nothing to stop you optimising your site in other ways.

Websites might also need to rejig their site architecture to make sure it is properly optimised for local pages. For instance, take a look at your homepage. Is it currently optimised for local search? If not, then you might well need to make some updates to ensure it still continues to rank for relevant search terms, an also to micro-format your address (if you don’t know what this is, please do ask us).

Also, just because Google has a significant new update out, don’t forget about the old ones. You may think that one of the easiest ways to optimise for local search might be to simply use the same or similar content on multiple pages and just change the keywords. However, this could end with you falling foul of last year’s Google Panda/Farmer update that punishes low quality or duplicate content. Making the extra effort to properly optimise your site for Google Venice is definitely worth it. 

Local link building might also help, although it’s not yet clear how the recent updates have impacted on how links are included in determining search rankings. Some suggest that they have become less important, but you still shouldn’t ignore this area, particularly if you’re trying to cement your local profile.

And, despite what you might think, you don’t even need inbound links to your site to improve your local rankings. Google uses NAP data (Name, Address, Postcode) to identify your business and gets this information from various sources on the web. So, search Google for your postcode, then your company name, and try to make sure the information found is consistent with the NAP on your site, to your Google Places listing, to anywhere else where your NAP is listed (including where you might be listed without there even being a link to you site). Consistency, and relevancy, are key – if you can get NAP listings on sites that also service the same area you are based (so, for example, we might look to get NAP listings on London-centric sites) that will be more relevant than having a NAP listing on a global web site, or a site that’s focussed on content on the other side of the world.

Overall, Google Venice might be able to be explained in just a couple of sentences, but its potential impact could be really significant. Taking action now to ensure your site continues to rank well should definitely be on all of our ‘to do’ lists.

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In recent days, Google has come under increasing pressure from Twitter and others who accuse the corporation of prioritising its own search results over others. The accusation from Twitter is that Google is boosting the search rankings of its own Google+ site over other social networking sites.

This essentially means that when people are logged in to Google and do a search, they will typically see results from the Google+ networking site appearing near the top of the page. This is significant because of the high click-through rate associated with the first page of search rankings – only a tiny proportion of web users ever go onto the second page of search results, which is why web designers and SEO experts spend so much effort trying to get onto that coveted first page.

The accusation that is levelled at Google largely came about because of a new feature that they are currently rolling out: ‘Search, plus Your World’. The idea behind this is about helping people find the best results for their search term. Google makes the point that sometimes these results come from the ‘public’ domain – that is, other websites offering information or services. However, sometimes these results are more personal, and so the new feature also incorporates personal content into search results, such as content that an individual has previously shared with their friends and family.

One concern that has been raised relates to privacy and the perception that personal results now appear as though they are also public. In fact, this is not true, but it does mean that friends and family who previously weren’t included in ‘sharing’ posts might now be able to access information from people they are connected with.

The upshot of Search plus Your World is that social search, personal search and personalised search – all of which typically make up search results – have been combined. You should know when you are seeing personal search results because as well as the usual ‘X results found’ notification, you’ll also see an ‘X personal results’ found notification at the top of the results screen.

The criticism from Twitter, mentioned above, is that these personal results heavily favour Google+, and in fact Twitter, Facebook and other social networks aren’t currently covered by Search plus Your World. One of the reasons Twitter isn’t happy about this is because of the trend for news to break first on Twitter – and they’re worried that breaking information will be harder for people to find if Google+ is prioritised in the search results.

Google argues that Facebook, Twitter and others don’t allow the search bots to crawl their sites particularly deeply (largely because of privacy reasons, but a fair reading would also argue it’s possible they’re not too keen on the idea of sharing their information with a dominant, powerful rival) and that Google+ is the only one they have decent access to – hence the prioritisation in the social and personal search results. It essentially allows Google to integrate more of its services so that they can all be searched from the one, central, google.com (or .co.uk) location, rather than separately having to carry out searches in Google+, News and Images, for example.

However, this isn’t an entirely new argument: it has been reported before that when people carry out Google searches for their own names (we’ve all done it at one time or another), their Google+ profiles appear higher in the search results than their Facebook and Twitter pages. This led to similar prioritisation accusations being made on the grounds that while people had spent years working on their Facebook or Twitter accounts, Google+ has only been going for a few months and so it’s odd that it would be appearing higher in the results.

Arguably, though, this can be explained away by the same reasons. Google has better access to and more information from Google+. Plus, personal Facebook profiles aren’t included in site crawls and when you consider that Twitter posts are limited to only 140 characters, there is often very limited information available from other sites for the search bots to pick up on.

Also, it’s possible to argue that Google is simply better at SEO than Facebook and Twitter. For example, Google+ encourages authors to put links back to their Plus profile on their own websites – and any SEO expert will tell you that inbound links are very important. There’s also typically a huge amount of useful search content on Plus profiles, often because they simply include more information than other networking sites. Google+ also allows more descriptive title tags.

Overall, it seems as though on this occasion, even though there are some privacy concerns and legitimate worries about Google’s increasing prevalence, Search plus Your World is a clever update from Google. One thing to keep an eye on, though, is the growing pressure for an antitrust investigation as a result of Google’s dominance.

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We have written before about the impact that Google updates are able to have on many websites, with Panda/Farmer being a notable example of this, as well as about the growth of the Google Chrome browser. You may also remember that, last year, we mused about what might happen if everyone decided to conduct a little experiment and block Google from Chrome’s own Personal Block List.

Now, with a certain irony (or just bad luck on Google’s part), we now have a chance to see what happens when one of Google’s own services is downgraded in its search rankings. In this case, we are talking about the Chrome browser, which has been at the centre of a dispute over the past week or so as a result of a promotions campaign.

The story behind this is that Google hired a company to promote its increasingly popular Chrome browser. As a result, promotional videos were produced and placed on a range of blogs. This is all fine, but the problems arose when at least one of the bloggers failed to include the ‘nofollow’ text that is required by Google when placing paid links – Google has a rule that states paid promo material should not be used to move links up in its search index, so bloggers including links to Chrome downloads broke the guidelines.

It seems as though this rule breach was completely unintended: Google had contracted the work out to a third party, specifying what they wanted, but ended up getting something different to what they asked for. For a few days, it was unclear exactly what would happen to Chrome as a result of the rule-breaking; the mistake may have been innocent but there have been reports of other sites being downgraded previously for similar errors.

In the end, Google decided to temporarily downgrade the Chrome browser in its search index, stating that even though the issues with the blogs and promo videos have been rectified, the company holds itself to a higher standard and so action has been taken as a result. The web address www.google.com/chrome has been demoted for at least 60 days and the PageRank of that page has also been lowered. Google has reported that after the 60 days are up, the process will continue as it would with any other company: Chrome will need to submit a request for the case to be reconsidered and document the action they have taken to clean up the issue.

You can currently see evidence of this action yourself: if you go to Google and type in ‘browser’ and then scroll down the page, you shouldn’t see any evidence of Chrome in the results. In fact, at the time of writing, we had to go to the top of page 2 of the search results to see a paid ad for Chrome, and we were on page 7 before we found the first organic Chrome result.

This downgrade has to be something of a blow for Google, especially as Chrome is becoming more and more popular – and the promo campaign means that people are more likely to be searching for it.

Other browser news

It might only be the start of 2012 but it has been something of a busy week for browser news – this time, it is news that web designers and developers have been waiting for: IE6 seems to be finally on its way out.

Microsoft announced this week that Internet Explorer 6, the browser it has been actively trying to get rid of for quite some time, is now used by less than 1% of the US online population. To celebrate, they had a cake baked. As a result of the significant decline of IE6, Microsoft has said that web developers can now treat the browser as a low priority, freeing up designers and others to focus on more up to date technology.

This is good news for Microsoft, which has been battling with IE6 for years, but even though many countries have now moved on to later technology, IE6 is still popular in other places – a notable example is China, where around a quarter of web users are still on IE6. This suggests there is still some way to go before the death knell of IE6 can be sounded once and for all. We look forward to seeing the cake that gets made for that one.

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If you are looking for a little bit of end-of-year entertainment search trends analysis, it is definitely worth paying a visit to Google Zeitgeist. This is Google’s website that lets you take a look at the fastest rising and fastest falling trends of 2011 (among other things).

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Zeitgeist, it is a tool that allows you to see the ‘top 10’ of a range of categories. You can choose to search on a global basis or according to a specific country, which gives an interesting insight into what has gripped our collective imaginations over the past 12 months. Google calculates the lists by examining billions of search queries, determining the most popular trends of the year and then ranking them according to how well they increased (or fell) in popularity in comparison to the previous year. So, who or what exactly have we been spending our time searching this year?

Interestingly (or worryingly, depending on your point of view), the fastest rising search term on a global basis was ‘Rebecca Black’. You may remember Ms Black as the US teenager who released a song called ‘Friday’, became a YouTube sensation and generally took a bit of stick in the media on the grounds that the song wasn’t the best composition ever created. In the UK, she entered the fastest rising search trends list at number 9. She was, however, number 3 on the fastest rising people list.

As you might expect, the Royal Wedding also played a major role in worldwide search trends over the course of this year. On a global basis, Pippa Middleton was number 3 on the fastest rising people list, while Kate Middleton was number 10. If we confine the search to the UK, Kate Middleton was number 8 on the list, while Pippa wasn’t on the fastest rising people list at all (Ryan Dunn was number 1; he was the star of Jackass who was killed in a car crash).

One of the most interesting global Google Zeitgeist lists is the fastest rising news search trends. Top of the list is Fukushima, which was the site of Japan’s nuclear disaster a few months ago. The iPhone 4s was the second fastest rising news item, which perhaps offers an intriguing view into the things that grab our attention and the things that don’t (the iPhone 5 was the 8th item on this list, ahead of Gaddafi at 9 and Libya at 10). At the time of writing, it wasn’t possible to view just the UK list for fastest rising news trends, so we can’t compare or analyse specific local events.

However, one UK list that does provide some interest is the ‘what is’ trend list. ‘What is AV’ came out on top of the list. It seems like a long time ago now, but you probably remember the AV referendum that took place at the start of May 2011, hence the otherwise slightly odd search question. Our favourite entry on this particular list has got to be the runner up. In at number 2 is that all important question ‘what is scampi’. 

But what is the point of all of this? Surely one of the main uses of Google Zeitgeist is to offer a retrospective view of what the year was all about. It feels as though 2011 has been fairly news-heavy, often with a lot of pretty hefty, sometimes quite bleak news stories. What Zeitgeist suggests is that, despite all that, we’re still very interested in the world of celebrities and gossip – but that search also has a serious, useful side, providing us with information on electoral systems and important news events that resonate around the world.

Of course, next year’s search trends are likely to be different to this year’s, and so from a web design point of view, they are useful from a review and interest point of view rather than a practical one. However, it’s always interesting to get an insight into how people use the web, whether that involves the demographics of people who go online or the type of things they search for on Google.

If you want to know more about Zeitgeist or to view the other lists that are available, you can do so here.

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