February was a record month, with FORTY changes to the Google algorithm, which (aside from making the mind boggle for SEO types such as me) have quite a big impact on the way small business needs to treat their search optimisation efforts. There is an official Google blog on the subject, but as one contact of mine said yesterday “I got bored reading all of that” – it is a very in depth article which is excellent for industry professionals, but what you want to know is:

1. What does it mean?
2. Does it affect me?
3. Do I have to change anything?
4. Does it matter?

So, I have pulled out the 8 most relevant updates, copied the segment of the relevant article for you, and after each segment I will answer those questions for you:

• More coverage for related searches.[launch codename “Fuzhou”] This launch brings in a new data source to help generate the “Searches related to” section, increasing coverage significantly so the feature will appear for more queries. This section contains search queries that can help you refine what you’re searching for.

  

  1. What does it mean? – When you search on Google, at the bottom of the results you sometimes see a related search section (as shown to the right). This section has now been refined and expanded so will show more often.
  2. Does it affect me? – Quite possibly. It opens up a whole new area of possible ways you can get seen by your potential customers. If somebody frequently searches for your company name in relation to a search query (i.e. “Web Developer Flosee”) then this search could now start to appear when people search for the shorter version of that word (i.e. when they search for “Web Developer”).
  3. Do I have to change anything? – No, but do keep an eye on your analytics keywords. If you see a big keyword is being used in conjunction with your company or brand name, then try and encourage these searches (and perhaps search yourself a couple of times a day) to get your brand/company name seen more often.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes. If you aren’t in this section, your competitors soon will be.
• More locally relevant predictions in YouTube.[project codename “Suggest”] We’ve improved the ranking for predictions in YouTube to provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India].
  1. What does it mean? – The above explains this pretty well.
  2. Does it affect me? – Yes. If you publish videos, ensure you are including geo data (location based keywords and co-ordinates where possible). This will help you to be seen by people closest to you. Remember YouTube is actually the second biggest search engine on the internet.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – Aside from adding geographic tags to your videos, no.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes, this tweak brings the local search factors into social, with YouTube being a hybrid social / search site.
• Refreshed per-URL country information.[Launch codename “longdew”, project codename “country-id data refresh”] We updated the country associations for URLs to use more recent data.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Google tries to associate every single web page with a country, to ensure that the page is displayed to the most relevant audience. This data has been updated and refined.
  2. Does it affect me? – Probably not. Run a check on your domain (type in your domain and click “lookup” at Network Tools and make sure it shows your country.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – If the above search doesn’t show your target country, then you may need to look into switching hosting to ensure you come up on country specific searches. For example, google.co.uk will always favour UK based sites, and if you select “UK only” then non UK locations are filtered out of the results.
  4. Does it matter? – Only if you are currently hosted outside of your current target market.
• Data refresh for related searches signal.[launch codename “Chicago”, project codename “Related Search”] One of the many signals we look at to generate the “Searches related to” section is the queries users type in succession. If users very often search for [apple] right after [banana], that’s a sign the two might be related. This update refreshes the model we use to generate these refinements, leading to more relevant queries to try.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Similar to the first tweak mentioned above, this modification helps Google to build up a picture of what searches are related, then suggest these other search queries to the end user by looking at what previous customers have searched for when their first search has not been succesful.
  2. Does it affect me? – Yes. Especially for smaller businesses, coming up on big hitting keywords is very difficult. However, by looking at what searches are suggested this can give you an idea of less competitive keywords you can realistically rank for and target. These search strings are likely to see higher volumes of visitors if they are being suggested from the parent search. For example, trying to rank on the first page for “dog walker” is going to be a very hard task, especially for a smaller business with limited resources. However, the suggested search of “hire dog walker” has less than 10% of the competition.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – Yes. Look at the suggestions Google offers for your industry and market. Then ensure you are targeting these suggested search strings.
  4. Does it matter? – It is not vitally important, but it does offer an opportunity for the smaller business to compete.
• 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.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Local results in the past were ordered by how close they are to you, how many reviews the site had and the keyword density of the Google places listing. This change brings local search ranking into line with general search rankings.
  2. Does it affect me? – Yes, almost certainly if you are trying to rank for a local audience.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – In fact, this change makes life simpler, as it means that good practise with your search optimisation will benefit both general search queries AND your local search audience.
  4. Does it matter? – If you have been relying on a lot of traffic from the fact that you have good local rankings, then this could make a huge difference to your website traffic. Act quickly to ensure you keep your position, or if you didn’t have a good position before then putting good SEO in place will give you a big advantage.
• Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Last years Panda update went a long way to removing spam from Google listings, mainly by devaluing shady SEO tactics and looking at a wider set of signals to determine whether a site should rank well for any given keyword. This is a further tweak to this update, and generally good news for legitimate business owners.
  2. Does it affect me? – If you have outsourced your SEO in the past, this could have big implications for you as the “quick fix” SEO tactics that some companies used will now not only cease to benefit your website, they could actually start to harm its potential to show up in search results. If you are seeing your search rankings fall through the floor, this is the most likely cause.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – Only if you are seeing big falls in rankings. If you are, I suggest you give us a call so we can identify what tactics are at fault and what we can do to reverse your decline.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes. The Panda update is a positive step for honest business – if you are not seeing any benefit then somewhere along the line your website has sent a wrong signal to Google, and that needs to be found and removed.
• Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.

  

  1. What does it mean? – When you build a link to your website, the page that links sits on is now subject to a more detailed check to see if the page has any relevance to the site it has a link to.
  2. Does it affect me? – Yes. You can no longer sprinkle links across the internet like confetti! Links coming to your website need to be on a page with content about your subject or industry, otherwise the link will be massively devalued.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – If you are in the habit of adding links to your site, you should now ensure that there is at least a paragraph (preferably a LOT more) around the link about your subject to make sure Google sees it as a “good” link.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes, this is another step by Google to counteract the past shady practises of certain sections within the SEO community.
• Improved local results.We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Google will try to match a user to a local website wherever it can.
  2. Does it affect me? – Almost certainly. If you haven’t already put in locality features to your website, do it now!
  3. Do I have to change anything? – Ensure you are added to Google Places with your full address and a link to your website, then ensure your website contains geotag data.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes! This can dramatically increase your exposure to your local audience. Most websites will not be taking the above steps, you doing so gives you a huge competitive advantage.

Feel free to comment below if these latest updates have had a positive or negative effect on yous business, or if you want us to explain in any more detail any of the points, and please click the sharing buttons to the left to let your business contacts know about these important updates.