Matt Cutts, the voice of Google search makes some interesting predictions for 2010 about websites in general along with Google search and what we can all expect to see during this year. One of Matt’s biggest concerns will be website safety and security. Matt Cutts expects to see much more hacking type activities occurring in 2010 and recommends that everybody has the most up to date security features on their websites so that nobody gets their fingers on your websites and do any harmful activities that could affect your livelihood. 2009 saw an uptick in websites getting hacked from a variety of new and strange sources and he expect this trend to increase for 2010. Don’t wait to secure your website when you get hit because the reactive costs could be much higher than just taking a proactive stance now.

Here is the Google Search Predictions Video by Matt Cutts:

Predictions for Google stem mostly around speed and relevancy. Google is always on the prowl to really keep their search results clean and relevant so users are completely satisfied with the end results. Google will also be making the distinction between black hat and white techniques much clearer and really focusing on eliminating anybody who attempts to take a black hat technique when marketing a website. Google is always strengthening and improving their search tool. It seems like each year Google makes a very strong effort to eliminate all the bad apples in the SEO industry. If you teeter on black and white hat SEO techniques I would make it a 2010 new year’s resolution to persuade yourself to land in the white hat territory. Yes, it takes longer, but when it works it is well worth the wait!

I just found this excellent video by Google’s Matt Cutts that has great and useful information about the state of Google’s search index. The video is about 25 minutes long, but take a break and give it a watch

There is an interesting article on Web Pro News that discusses a significant change to local search when it comes to SEO and web design. Put simply, SEO and web design businesses are no longer appearing in local searches, at least, not for simple searches. I wrote about this last week as well, please read the post at the following link:
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2010/01/03/local-search-intent/

A search for “SEO Boston” is not likely to return any local search results. Add the word “in” – “SEO in Boston”, and the local search results appear. While it is tough on web designers and SEO businesses, is there more to this than meets the eye?

SEO consultants (and web designers) are easy targets when it comes to tweaking anything to do with search. Who is going to notice and discuss a change in search, why SEO writers off course. You have to wonder then if Google have made this change as a test for a more general change in local search. If this one little change improves search results and also trains searchers to be more specific in their queries, will we soon see this change spread to other areas of local search?

I think we may. Google is all about improving search results and producing results that more specific to a query. If the search engines can train users to be more specific with their search queries, results should become more specific. It is a fair enough approach. The search “SEO Boston” is not specific. Is the searcher looking for an SEO consultant in Boston, or one that will provide a service to someone in Boston? The same can then be said for spare tires, books, and a million and one other products.

It’s just a thought, but is Google tweaking local search and using SEO as the guinea pigs? Or is Google just attacking SEO people because of the black hats out there that are abusing Google local maps search results for themselves and their clients? I am not sure…why can’t Google just change 1 thing at a time, with Google Caffeine happening soon, why do they have to change local search right now.

Matt Cutts announced in early November that Google Caffeine would be available in one data center after the holidays. In other words, the new joy ride in search will begin in January 2010.

But what exactly is Google Caffeine and how could it possible impact search engine optimziation?

In August, when Google first introduced its beta-tested new search infrastructure, they announced that Google Caffeine would “let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.” Then Google began accepting test drives and feedback, but the site for that process has been taken down and replaced with a thank you message. So are you ready?

I suspect that by the end of January (this month) – maybe even by the end of the first or second week in January – we’ll start seeing some of new results of Google Caffeine. Any idea what that will entail?

I believe the Google Caffeine update will primarily focus on three things:

• A ranking system that heightens the importance of page load speeds
• A more focused relevance on real-time search data
• Stricter spam controls

Why do I say this? Google’s own words – speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness.

Matt Cutts has already discussed the importance of page load times and I think we all see it coming. Page load speed will be taken into greater consideration on future search results. That will probably happen with Google Caffeine. And who can argue that the major search engines have already discovered real-time search? What you see in Google’s SERPs now is just a small taste. I expect that will be improved upon a thousand-fold.

The tricky one will be Google’s attempt to control spam. How the search engine will achieve greater comprehensiveness while de-listing or diminishing the rankings of spam sites is a mystery beyond my imagination, but I can see Google going there. Can’t you?

I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but Google has launched its own URL shortener service called Goo.gl. Obviously, there are some pros and cons to this type of service.

One drawback that I see is that the service is only available through the Google Toolbar and Feedburner. I can’t shorten an URL directly like I can with other services like Tinyurl and Bit.ly. Secondly, Bit.ly offers tracking of your short URLs; Goo.gl does not (that I see). It would be fantastic if Goo.gl was integrated into Google Analytics and provided nice robust tracking for links shortened and used on social site such as Twitter and Facebook. Also, it would be great if these types of shortened links generated by Goo.gl also showed up as non re-direct links in Google webmaster tools. Just imagine, that many more shortened links showing up to help your inbound link building efforts.

An obvious benefit is that it is owned by Google. That means the service likely won’t go away. There is some stability there. But this can also be seen as a drawback. Will Google at some point decide to force all webmasters to use the URL shortening service? Good question from Andy Beal.

And another drawback, how many non-core services does Google offer that actually go somewhere? Over the years Google has had some great services offered to customers (all in beta of course!) and many of them quietly lasted and even more of them shut down and are no longer available.

Another potential issue that comes to mind is that there are already a ton of URL shorteners on the market right now. What does Goo.gl offer that the others don’t? Besides direct shortening from its toolbar and Feedburner? And besides it displays and uses the Google brand? Gee, I’m counting more drawbacks than benefits. Have you done the math on Goo.gl? Time will really tell on this one if Goo.gl will have long term staying power and user acceptance.

It looks like Google is about to acquire Yelp. No surprise, really. Is there a vertical Google hasn’t made a purchase in?

Two things happen when Google makes an acquisition in a vertical. A competitor comes along and outdoes them or Google develops the vertical into a profitable enterprise for itself. Notice I didn’t say Google improves the vertical.

Well, Yelp pretty much owns the local business review vertical. There are very few companies even competing over that space. So if Google does acquire Yelp it will be one more vertical the search giant owns by virtue of its bigness. That’s not saying that local business reviews and local search will necessarily improve. But it will change.

All the major search engines already have local business centers, but at present they are nothing more than directories with bells and whistles. Sites like Yelp actually are better at attracting the local business audience. So Google will naturally want to advertise to that market and capture that audience. How will local search change?

For one thing, I think it will become pay per click advertising centered. I’d look to see how Google marries AdWords and Yelp to better help local businesses reach their target market. Another marriage that could ensue is Yelp and YouTube – local video search anyone? I see many great possibilities for improvement of Yelp with Google muscle behind it.

Yes, I think local search would change forever. How drastically is really anyone’s guess.

OK, here’s a good one. You own the distribution model for paid-for advertising. You allow advertisers to spend money to distribute their ads through your network using your name. You even take their money. Then you sue them for using your name.

That’s what Google is doing. Suing advertisers who use the Google name in pay-per-click ads on Google.

Wait a minute. With all of Google’s fancy schmancy technology, they can’t block ads that use the keyword “Google”? There’s just something about this that doesn’t seem right.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning the work-at-home scams. There are a ton of them. And using another company’s good name to scam people out of their money using trickery, outright lies, deception, and other nefarious deeds is just flat wrong. But if you own the distribution channel for the ads surely you can stop the ads from displaying to begin with. Can’t you? Imagine this scenario: Your local newspaper takes money from an advertiser for running ads promising to make people rich using your local newspaper’s name (fill in the blank). Then the newspaper sues the advertiser for making money off the use of the newspaper’s name. Will it fly?

I don’t think it will. The obvious argument for the defense here is that the company, in this case Google, has the technology, the overall ability, and the motivation for blocking the ads before they run. Therefore, they’re as guilty as the advertiser.

What do you think? Is this a case of trademark infringement or just a bad case of Google With Head Up Butt Syndrome? Or even worst these type of Google scams spend so much money that they don’t mind making some additional money from them until these advertisers get themselves in trouble and then they take action? I don’t know, but this is is an interesting topic for sure!

It seems that Google is always trying to improve. But sometimes the improvement is not really an improvement. The search engine recently changed its home page to “fade in”, which means that all you’ll see upon landing on the page is the search box. Then, after a few seconds you’ll start to see all the navigational links at the top of the page. Is this good?

From the Google blog:

Google is all about getting you where you are going faster — how could we launch something that potentially slowed users down? Then, we realized: we want users to notice this change… and it does take time to notice something (though in this case, only milliseconds!). Our goal then became to understand whether or not over time the users began to use the homepage even more efficiently than the control group and, sure enough, that was the trend we observed.

Trust me, I noticed. But I also noticed that if I want to click one of those navigational links then I’ve got to wait. That didn’t make me all that happy.

Something else I noticed is that fade in page is what you get when you are not signed into your personalized Google account. If you are signed in then you go straight to your personalized page, no fade in. So, obviously, Google’s fade-in approach is targeted toward new users or people who do not use the personalized search features.

What do you think? Is it a good change, or a little annoying?

Google Analytics recently announced, on December 1, that there is a new code in beta. It’s the Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking Code.

If you have a Google Analytics account then you can start using the code right away. But what does it do? According to the Google Analytics blog, it increases your page load time, uses enhanced data collection, and eliminates some tracking errors. The page load time benefit is tremendous both for your visitors and for search engines as well.

For Google to offer this tracking code now indicates to me that page load time is something webmasters, business owners and marketers should pay more attention to. Currently, if you have a slow loading website you won’t be penalized, but your site won’t be given extra points while your competition may at some point. Page load time is extremely important to help improve the user experience of your website. Google has recently hinted that in the future, page load time of your website may become a more important role when determining web page rankings as part of its search algorithm.

It actually makes sense that Google would start by helping load time with their Google Analytics product. I have experienced many situations that the loading of the Google Analytics code on a page sometimes takes longer to load than other aspects of a page. So it makes sense that they start with the Asynchronous Tracking Code especially if in the near future, page load time will become a factor as part of an on site optimization program. We would not want Google to contribute to longer load times, now would we?

We’ve discussed Google’s snippets before. But few people discuss Yahoo! snippets. Maybe the search community has written Yahoo! off as irrelevant?

Regardless of what any of us think about Yahoo!, they are still a part of the search game. And I’d say a major part since they are still the second largest search engine around. Recently, SEO By The Sea wrote a blog post detailing a patent application regarding a method for selecting a snippet for a search page. Bill Slawkski, as usual, has some interesting insight.

The gist of Yahoo! patent application boils down to three things:

* A query-independent relevance for each line of text – a degree to which the line of text of the document summarizes the document.
* A query-dependent relevance of each of the lines of text – a relevance of the line of text to the query.
* The intent behind a query.

It’s interesting to note that keywords and semantic language are not mentioned here at all. Rather, Yahoo! focuses on two types of relevance – query dependent and query independent.

The query dependent relevance is a reference to how many times a query might appear within a line of text on a web page. It might also be a percentage of the query terms that appear in a line of text. In other words, if a line of text has 10 words and a query of 4 words turns up all 4 words in that line of text, that would be pretty high.

But the one I find interesting is this:

Whether the query is a substring of the line of text.

It’s really simple, but if you query a six-word query string and that entire six-word string shows up in a line of text on a web page, that’s pretty significant. I think it’s significant for all the search engines and I’d be surprised if a web page that met that query substring for a particular page didn’t rank that page at No. 1, or close to it, for the query. I mean, the odds of any one web page (out of millions) having the exact six word query string (with all the words in the right order) that a random searcher enters into a search box are phenomenally low.

Sorry to say, that’s not particularly sophisticated when you think about it. But the technology to make it happen is. And I think Yahoo! has some pretty sophisticated technology tools. Still, Google is light years ahead of them. I think it may be because Google started out light years ahead.