Google has been guiding us through our search process for years now. It continually strives to understand exactly what we are trying to ask and in turn gives us the most relevant search results. Once again Google is aiding us in our eternal search to get results and the quest is about to take a turn for the better.

The search giant has always been recognised as an information-based engine, and a pretty good one at that. This has heavily relied on an established list of links to other websites. With the development of its latest “Knowledge Graph”, confidence is high that this is taking one of a series of steps towards producing more informed search results – search results that are not as linear and don’t only acknowledge keywords, but rather understand the context of the search.

Recently a study was conducted to see how the information giant, Wikipedia, fared on the first Google results page as opposed to the SERP page for Bing. The search giants (perhaps one bigger than the other) were analysed for the amount of occasions Wikipedia appeared on the first and second pages.

Conductor recently published a study in order to establish the frequency of Wikipedia appearances on the results pages of major search engines Google and Bing. Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch covered the comparison and reported on the results. Google and Bing were to exhibit the search results of a 2 000 keyword set that was distributed across informational and transactional keywords.
Read on for the Results!

Google have caused widespread panic in the streets with yet another update; ironic then that they should pick an adorable penguin as its moniker. Released on the 24^th of April, the exact details and fallout of the update has been written on extensively, but we haven’t heard much about the concrete results. A large reason there is a petition doing the rounds against the Penguin Update is that a lot of legitimate smaller companies are feeling the squeeze as the distance between them and larger content sites is dragged to Grand Canyon sized proportions. The larger content sites like eHow, WikiHow, Yahoo Answers and Amazon are all sitting pretty after the update while smaller sites seem to be getting targeted quite vigorously; the exact how and why of this is still not clear as many clear the rubble caused by the update to try and figure out how it functions exactly.

Google has just released major changes to their AdWords platform that is set to heavily influence the way video advertising is purchased in the future. Just as Google has done with targeted online advertising through Google AdWords in the past, so they are set to do with video advertising from here on.

Much like the paid search that Google currently spearheads, the new AdWords for Video imitates that bidding model to allow for more affordable advertising and much more targeted video whether you’re an advertising agency or a small start-up doing in-house marketing. Perhaps the most significant change here is that advertisers will be able to target around ten times more users based on their demographics.

Don’t Stop Reading Here – There’s More!

When a top executive (Amit Singhal) at Google Search expresses that semantic search technology will lead Google’s algorithmic changes in the coming months, one tends to sit up and listen. What is semantic search technology and when is the search giant getting involved?

Semantics can be defined as the meaning, or an interpretation of the meaning, of a word, sign, sentence. As the leader in all things search, you’d naturally believe that Google would already have every corner covered, thanks to the extensive availability of end-user information. Surprisingly, semantic search is one area that Google has not dominated… yet.

Google’s threat of penalising ‘over-optimised’ content is no longer a threat; it’s clear that already certain sites are being flagged for what is deemed to be too optimised. While the definition of what is meant by over-optimisation still appears grey, Matt Cutts did mention that anything deemed to ‘go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area’ would be considered as a negative.

Still, that doesn’t really give as clear a definition as many would like for what exactly constitutes ‘over-optimisation’ but already examples are rolling in of companies being cited for the issue. It’s clear from the notices that have been sent out that once spotted you should make adequate changes and submit your website for reconsideration. So far it seems that penalties haven’t been fully levied and these notices serve merely as a warning, but given a few days I’m sure these websites can expect to find a negative reaction to their ‘over-optimisation.’

Despite making huge market inroads over the last few months and actually toppling the Internet Explorer market share for a day, Google has lost ground to the Microsoft browser in recent studies conducted over the past 3 months of 2012. After dropping almost 5% of the market share last year, IE has improved particularly against Firefox and Chrome and solidified with 2% growth as it continues to dominate the corporate user markets early in 2012. So what does this mean for SEO’s, developers and businesses?

There are many guns to Google’s head at the moment, as the privacy battle rages on we’re reminded of the double-edged sword illustrating how users wish to be treated with a more integrated experience across all of Google’s services, but at the same time engage in that ever-growing demand for privacy of information. Chairman of the Senate on Privacy, Technology and Law, Senator Al Franken asks whose good this is all really for.