What are Google doing?

This year Google released the Panda update, which saw a lot of media attention, as many sites’ rankings saw a dramatic drop – including Microsoft’s own CIAO which virtually disappeared from Google’s ranking completely. Meanwhile sites like YouTube and some of Google’s own sites were seeing a huge hike. This then triggered an EC investigation, in which Google was accused of using it’s monopoly unfairly. This could make you think that the update was a failure….however these updates helped the team of SEO Specialists at Flosee (and other reputable SEO companies) work out the way Google was ranking sites, which in turn helped our clients sites.

Yes I don’t doubt at first it did have a issue and caused a major fuss on the SEO scene with some major drops being reported by webmasters worldwide, after the dust had settled it became apparent that the majority of the biggest losers were those employing underhand techniques and using tricks on their sites to compete unfairly. We are delighted that these junk sites got penalised, and the genuine website owners were rewarded for their tenacity by seeing some unbelievable increases in rankings. Yes, some innocent sites suffered, but the main aim of the update was to remove irrelevant results, and the techniques employed by those sites had to be rooted out which therefore had an impact on legitimate sites in some cases (i.e. ciao).

Following hot on the heels of this major update to the search algorithm the search behemoth launched its flagship app – Google Plus. Unveiled in conjunction with Google Plus One, these twin apps were definitely designed to take back some ground from the runaway juggernaut that is FaceBook – the jury is still out, but from early takeup it looks like Google has appealed very much to its core audience, but that whilst Google Plus is growing at an unbelievable rate, it has done very little to dent the growth of FaceBook – this implies that the new users to Google Plus are actually running it in tandem with their FaceBook profile, not instead of it.

So, after quite a big year in terms of changes and new things coming out of the Google offices, it now seems that the search giant is looking to trim some of its many web properties, and a number of tools are coming under scrutiny – with many facing the axe in the not too distant future.

Lets look at what products google are going to be looking at.

• Aardvark – Google acquired Aardvark in early 2010, hoping that it would be a credible alternative to Yahoo Answers. This will be shut down but Google are saying they are going to carry on seeing if they can find there own alternative of this which will work and “enable people to connect and discover richer knowledge about the world “.
• Desktop -  This is one Google feature I’m a little sad to see leave. As of September 14th 2011 Google Desktop will be discontinued including all the plug-ins, API and services. On the bright side of this though it’s not leaving us completely as Bill Gates loved the idea of the sidebar so it is now standard with Vista and Windows 7.
• Fast Flip – This one is staying, what Fast Flip does is to help fuel richer and faster content within the web and for mobile devices. It has seemed to be a great success so hopefully this will be further integrated with the new delivery system and display system Google are planning for it.
• Google Maps API for Flash – This i am happy to see go. Flash for Google maps is now soon to be deprecated so that they can focus their attention on Javascript. If you have a flash Google map on your site I would recommend changing it to Javascript before it becomes deprecated – Google Maps Premier Customers are going to still be supported but I would still recommend moving to javascript as Google said themselves they are going to be working on Javascript and Flash is becoming deprecated. (this is yet another nail in the coffin for Flash which has seen a huge number of disastrous losses in the last year – most notably the iPad and iOS not being Flash compatible – are the days of Flash numbered…?)
• Google Pack -  This was Google’s version of CNET with a massive database of 100′s of millions freeware, shareware and pay for it software. Launched in 2005, it was an amazing idea and it worked perfectly. Unfortunately because it worked so well, a lot of developers now have their own websites with high renown. This in turn meant these developers deserted the platform, which meant for the past year or so the download rate from this site has been rapidly decreasing. Unfortunately as of  the 2nd of September 2011 this is no longer active. You can still access the software that was on there, you will just be directed the website that now hosts it. N.B. Google Code is still very much alive, and it could be that the two systems were basically overkill and the leaner, meaner Google Code is the one left standing.
• Google Web Security – This is an odd one as Google haven’t issued any reason why they are stopping it, but the web security came to them during the Postini Acquisition back in 2007 and since then Google had integrated it into nearly every Google product available, with Google Chrome being a prime example with the safe browsing function. They are discontinuing the sale of Google Web Security but they are going to carry on supporting any customers that have already purchased the product.
• Image Labeler – This was a game that google had created,  people were able to label images from the web. It is being discontinued but they still have all the other games.
• Notebook – This was a app where you would combine clipped URL’s from the Internet into a document where you would then share them. To be honest i think they are completely right to merge this with Google Doc’s as it’s basically the same thing. They are saying it is to be shut down in the coming months and the migration to Google Docs should be completed by early 2012.
• Sidewiki – This was a tool where you could publish information about any web page straight to Google from your browser via the sidebar. They have decided to focus more on GooglePlus. I am interested to see how that can work merged into Google Plus. I guess we’ll have to wait and see as they are giving authors a few months to download their content before they do anything with it, that then means we are going to have to wait until at least mid 2012 before anything is announced.
• Subscribed Links – This was a really clever application. You could subscribe to websites and on certain queries that you specified, the links were then added to the natural results. Developers have been given until the 15th of September 2011 to download their data before it’s completely shut down.

So what will be the outcome of Google’s Autumn Clean

So what do you make of Google getting rid of these apps? Personally I think there are a few that could have been salvaged and changed into something else – and a few that should have never started. I do think Google are making the wise decision of cleaning up their portfolio, so they can focus on their next big venture and really focus on launching the big startups of 2011 – Google Plus and Plus One. In addition, there are a huge number of new tools in Beta testing, which will no doubt push the boundaries of what is possible on the web ever further forwards. There is no doubt that Google has a knack of identifying need and creating tools to solve problems, and we can promise you that at Flosee we will be keeping a very close eye on developments, using the tools to increase your business exposure and improve the efficiency with which we attain results for our clients.

_{Todays blog post was written by Kevin Nave, an apprentice SEO technician working at Flosee, with a focus on SEO trends.}