Here’s our 1st article on what you need to know and do to get, or regain, your site rankings in Google:

How To Get Rankings In Google Panda

Get your questions answered in this new article. This is especially relevant now as Google has announced that they’ll be taking a closer look at Cloaking in the coming months. Find out why you should care.

SEO Cloaking – What It Is & Why It’s A Bad Idea

Modified Broad Match: What It Is & How To Use It To Your Advantage

Basically it’s a quicker, instantaneous response to your search query as you type it. You’ll see that as you begin entering anything in the search box, from the very first character or number, Google will start trying to match what they think you’re after in an expanded box just below the where you’re typing.

The idea is to give you even faster access to whatever it is you want. This is a response to what they believe searchers are looking for – instant gratification, you might say. Does it provide it? Sometimes it’s on the mark, other times not so much. This is early in the implementation, though, so it might see improvements as time goes on.

Another issue is that you just might be slowed down in entering your query because you’re watching, and reacting to, what Google is throwing up. You can’t help but look at the stack of keyphrases that are appearing, which stops you from typing. So it’s not clear that this will speed up getting to your destination quicker every single time.

WILL THE SEARCHERS LIKE GOOGLE INSTANT?

I think some will love this and appreciate the speed advantage it promises, even if it isn’t a huge gain. Google actually only promises 2 to 5 seconds of saved time. Others will find it distracting so they will turn Google Instant off by clicking on the link that’s next to the search box. You can also turn it off by going to your Preferences in Google.

It’s not ‘psychic’, truly anticipating without fail where you’re going, but it is quick to respond as your search query takes shape. There’s something amazing about how it can change direction without slowing one bit.

This will be making waves for some time, though it’s not entirely clear how or where that will happen. Even Google doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of what this will ultimately bring into the world of search engines. That will be up to you and the other millions (billions?) of everyday searchers who are the true testing ground and the final judges on these developments.

Google, Page Load Time & Your SEO

Though the personalized results haven’t brought radically different listings into play, they do impact who gets shown when and to whom. That means you’re not guaranteed to be #4 or #5 for everybody for your all important keyphrases. So what can you do?

Find out what your strategy needs to be in this article:

SEO For Google’s Personalized Search

Your SEO Is Not An Office Supply, Pt 3

Find it here:

Google & Search Engine Statistics/Data

First, if it does fly and becomes a real competitor to Facebook, the spoils are obvious. More eyeballs, further Web dominance, plus a brand new avenue for their very lucrative advertising programs. But, how would they benefit if it fails?

Even if it goes down the tubes, they get one thing they are always after – behavior data. And they’ll get it in spades. Let’s say they only get 1 million people to sign up and participate on their platform. That’s a pretty good sample for reliable marketing, and market, research.

Facebook is already benefitting from the HUGE amount of knowledge they’ve built up from their members declaring exactly what they like, their political preference, what they don’t line and even their ‘orientation’.

If Google could add similar data to their already huge storehouse of search behavior, they’ll have a huge advantage for serving their ads. They’ll know that much more about targeting messages, services and products to the right person.

So what if Google Me dies after a few years of comparatively low use? They’ll still walk away with a mountain of data to use and benefit from in the years ahead. They may take a loss on one hand, but the other hand, Advertising, will make up for that. And fast.

On top of that one very good reason, they’re going to have to offer something incredibly advanced over Facebook to get people to change over. After all, people are pretty entrenched now on Facebook, at least for the foreseeable future.

One could say that people were saying the same thing about Facebook when they were the new kid and MySpace was the standard. But MySpace lost the lead because of a lot of things they did, rather than just because Facebook was overwhelmingly better. MySpace and its crazy quilt backgrounds – which made reading anything impossible – and their inability to police behavior were major factors to their decline.

Facebook, though they’ve hit some potholes, has maintained general good will with their users. Even if some of the potholes were of their own making.

So why would search engine giant Google be entering this race? Although it doesn’t make a lot of sense at the moment, I can see exactly what the reasons would be. And it has everything to do with their bottom line. More in the next post.