CNET has now released certain data; as they compiled about 100,000 Google results; testing Google.com in March; and then last week; just after the novel update; the data reveals earlier reported data from SearchMetrics in terms of news websites benefiting and demand media’s eHow descending.

One interesting element which CNET’s data brings to the table; however; is that of Google’s localization and their relationship with the update.

“We also tested what happens if you connect to Google.com from an overseas Internet address. We picked one in London. We performed the same searches on the same day–the only variable that should have changed, in other words, was our location,” explains CNET chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh. “The results? Google engages in significant localization efforts, as you might imagine, with Yelp.com being the largest beneficiary by far.”

“In searches originating from the U.K., Yelp appeared only twice,” he adds. “In U.S. searches, by contrast, it was the ninth-most popular Web site, with both its topic and individual business pages weaved seamlessly into the main search results.”

SearchMetrics’ data did exhibit yelp.co.uk as having a 29.59% boost in visibility.

Yelp picked up 45 first-page appearances for generic searches like “cleaning,” “chocolate,” “lights,” “food,” “laundry,” “tv,” and “weddings,” from a California address; according to McCullagh, while Davidsbridal.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Walgreens.com benefited in U.S. from localization as well.

It is not all just big brands though. Local-based results won big as well; based on CNET’s testing; not only local locations for big brands or local businesses; but locally-themed results.

“For our U.S. tests, we used an Internet address near Palo Alto, Calif., which prompted Google to rank nearby businesses and municipal Web sites near the top of search results,” McCullagh explains. “The City of Palo Alto’s Web site appears in the first page of search results for terms including ‘adventures,’ ‘art,’ ‘business,’ ‘gas,’ and ‘jobs.’ PaloAltoOnline.com makes repeat appearances (‘budget cuts,’ ‘restaurants’), as do Stanford, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and Mike’s Bikes.”

It is no covert that Google has put a great deal more emphasis on local in recent time; but it is interesting to view how this is playing out in light of panda update; which was apparently unrelated. We noticed how news websites and video websites appeared to come out as big winners; but this research does appear to indicate even more wins for local.

The benefits to Yelp are without a doubt interesting; considering the tension there has been between Yelp and Google; regarding Google place pages and their use of Yelp reviews. Google’s own reviews system; Hotpot has now found its way into places and right into organic search results themselves.

Google is also finding out more ways to improve their local listings themselves. See the “open now” and local product listings; for instance. Oh, and by the way, Google just launched map maker for US; so users can add their “local knowledge” to the map. Interestingly enough; as Google concentrates more on local; the competition for local eyeballs is already heavily increasing. This is not just about search in the customary sense. You have to factor in entities like Facebook, LivingSocial, Foursquare, Groupon and others in these companies’ respective spaces.

The more ways people obtain the information related to local businesses from resources outside of Google; the less they will have to search for that information with Google.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

With Google looking more at social media nowadays; in terms of ranking signals; many webmasters continue to wonder how Google treats URL-shorteners in terms of search engine optimization.

This is not completely novel information but it yet appears to be a topic which continues to come up fairly regularly. Google’s Matt Cutts addressed this topic in a video posted to Google’s Webmaster Help YouTube channel.

“Custom URL shorteners are essentially just like any other redirects,” he explains. “If we try to crawl a page, and we see a 301 or permanent redirect, which pretty much all well-behaved URL shorteners (like bit.ly or goo.gl) will do, if we see that 301 then that will pass PageRank to the final destination.”

“So in general, there really shouldn’t be any harm to using custom URL shorteners in your SEO,” he continues. “The PageRank will flow through. The anchor text will flow through, and so I wouldn’t necessarily worry about that at all.”

“Now, just to let you know, if you look at, for example, Twitter’s web pages, many of those links have a nofollow link,” he adds. “So those links that are on the webpage, may not necessarily flow PageRank, but we might be able to find out about those links through some other way – maybe a data feed or something like that. But just URL shorteners, as far as how they relate to SEO, are not necessarily a problem at all.”

When we had a word with Gil Reich of Answers.com at SMX Advanced last summer; he recommended utilizing shorteners that allows you to get keywords in the URLs.

Google actually updated its own URL shortener, goo.gl, with certain novel features this past week which are copy to clipboard, spam reporting, improvements in pace and stability and remove from dashboard.

“Even as we add features, we continue to focus on making goo.gl one of the fastest and most reliable URL shorteners on the web,” said Google software engineer Devin Mullins. “We’ll continue working hard to ensure that we add minimal latency to the user experience and extend our track record of rock-solid reliability—we’ve had no service outages since we launched last September.”

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

Google has been running from pillar to post in order to make search more social but they continue to leave out your friends’ facebook content from their results. Certainly; you may find people from your social circle in the mix; but hundreds of millions of people utilize facebook and a number of them utilize it as their primary social network; the one where they communicate the most with their family and as well as closest friends.

Facebook data can enhance search for a number of reasons tied to that point. One reason is that of recommendations; even if they are unintentional. People avow positive and negative things about experiences they have with brands, movies, places, food, music, etc; this occurs naturally all the time. This information; based on people that you know can without a doubt offer a great deal of relevance to a query.

Yet another reason is photos. Just imagine how nice it would be to view photos from your friends turn up for pertinent queries. For instance you want to take a vacation in Maui. You could search for pictures of Maui on Google and find certain beautiful shots no doubt. How nice would it be to view your friends’ holiday pictures in the mix. You may not have even known that your friend went there; but if his/her photos appeared in your Google search then you would know and then you can discuss their experience with them.

Videos are another important reason. People nowadays are posting more and more videos on facebook; original and as well as links to interesting or entertaining things they have found on the internet. In pertinent cases; would it not be to view videos from your friends when they make sense. You can apply the Maui example here as well. Or for instance you are looking out for “TV on the Radio” videos; but not one particularly. Maybe you could view certain particular ones that your friends thought were cool.

But unfortunately Google does not include this type of personalized facebook data in their search results and there is nothing indicating that this is on the way either. Bing utilizes more personalized facebook data.

Meanwhile; third-parties are busy finding resolutions to problems like this. Greplin and Wajam are two examples. Granted; neither of them offer the perfect resolution to craft the type of rich search experience I am talking about but they are making strides where the top search engines are dawdling to adapt to user needs. There is a good chance that you do not in fact care about the opinion of everybody you are friends with on Facebook. Just because you knew a person in High School does not intend that you care about their opinions on Italian food. However; your friend who offers an amazing cuisine every time you go to his/her home for a dinner party may carry more weight.

Alternatively; you never know what you are going to be looking out for down the road and whose words may have certain hidden and unexpected relevance. Maybe you are friends with a person who has the complete opposite taste in movies as you.

The point is that facebook content has the potential to make search better when included in interesting and pertinent ways. This is one reason why facebook itself could be a perilous match for Google; if they ever decided to begin taking search more seriously.

To few people; the notion may look odd but it did not take long for a novel search engine called Bing to gain considerable ground in the search market. And Facebook’s user-base is huge. A concrete marketing budget can definitely go a long way as Microsoft proved with Bing and then of course there is that entire Bing-Facebook partnership thing. Bing powers Facebook’s web results and Bing will definitely locate novel ways to integrate facebook into their own experience.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

After about a year of testing; Google has taken a decision to get rid of their tag advertising program for Google places.

This program brought in by Google permitted advertisers to highlight their organic listings with yellow tags displaying offers, videos, photos, reservations, menus, etc. by paying out a monthly fee.

“Tags make your organic business listings stand out on the Google and Google Maps search results page with a bright yellow marker that highlights specific attributes such as offers, videos or photos,” said Google Places Senior Strategist Brianna Brekke said in December, noting that it did not affect the organic ranking of a business listing on Google or Google Maps.

“Since that experiment began, tens of thousands of businesses have used Tags to help potential customers make easier, more informed decisions when searching,” said product manager Shalini Agarwal in a Google blog post. “Throughout this period, we monitored Tags closely to learn more about our users’ business needs and how they used the product.”

“We’ve made a decision to shift our efforts toward other present and future product offerings for local businesses, and will be discontinuing this trial,” added Agarwal. “We’ve learned a lot from our Tags trial and will take that knowledge into account as we continue to find the best ways to serve users and local businesses alike.”

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert Team for more updates.

Demand Media’s eHow’ which escaped wrath of U.S. version of Google’s panda update; to actually get search visibility; appears to have been nailed out as the update rolled out globally and Google made further updates in U.S.

Google has avowed that it is utilizing signals from their domain-blocking features in “high confidence” conditions. Given that eHow is often the topic of complaints from people concerned with search quality; it appears fairly credible that it was a commonly blocked website particularly when you consider how high it has ranked on a number of queries.

SearchMetrics and Sistrix data released this week; looking at UK and Europe has eHow and as well as eHow.co.uk among the top losers of the global panda launch.

Today; demand media’s stock is down -1.36 to 20.17 a share; at the time of this writing.

Tim Chen; a former hedge fund analyst and chief executive officer of NerdWallet; write downs in a Seeking Alpha article; “Demand Media disclosed in their recent 10-K that 25% of 2010 annual revenues ($241 million) were from eHow and that 65% of eHow’s page view traffic came from Google searches…To add a wrinkle to the equation, it also turns out that the average that implies ~$41 million of revenue is at risk, or a $16.4 million revenue impact, assuming a 40% decline in Google search traffic.”

Today; demand media declared that they will be reporting their first quarter 2011 financial results on May 5. We have yet to get comment from demand media on the topic of Google’s algorithm update.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

A Google representative told us; “We’ve just streamlined it — we unified the data into one set to make it easier for users to understand what’s hot in Google web searches.”

U.S. hot topics section of Google trends appeared to be wedged on the akin ten for many days. As of Monday; the top ten hot topics were kelly clarkson, radio, beck, shutdown, boehner, shooting, masters, garcia, kyrie irving and anonymous.

Generally; these change frequently all through the day and as we noted, it appeared like “shutdown” would have been gone from the list; considering the government shutdown had already been avoided.

It almost immediately became clear that we were not the only ones who were considering a lack of updating here. We reached out to Google for comment. A representative told us that they would look into this for us; but we have yet to get an explanation. Earlier today; it appeared to be fixed as a novel set of keywords were being displayed related to timely events. However; now it appears to just be gone completely. Instead of top ten hot topics in the left column and the top ten hot searches in the right; there are just top five hot searches in the left column and six through ten on the right.

The search box for searching hot topics is not there as well. It is indistinct whether this is how Google trends will be from now on or if this is only temporary; on a semi-related note; twitter trends are now available in 70 novel locations.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

Google declared the launch of a novel Google-based trivia game for which they have partnered with New York times. It is a daily puzzle namely A Google A Day; where players are asked to utilize their “ingenuity and search abilities on Google” for answering questions; it will appear above the crossword puzzle in Times.

You do not have to be a subscriber of Times to play though. Google has set up a website for the game namely agoogleaday.com; which has a game-specific version of the Google search engine which players have to utilize. It is called deja Google; which Google explains as “a wormhole inspired time machine that enables you to solve today’s puzzle spoiler free by searching the Internet as it existed before A Google a Day launched.”

This version of the search engine keeps out real-time updates and other things which are “likely to incorporate spoilers as people post the answers to the puzzle online.” “As the world of information continues to explode, we hope A Google a Day triggers your imagination and helps you discover all the types of questions you can ask Google—and get an answer,” avows Google user experience researcher Dan Russell.

You can look at past questions and answers and share them with friends through facebook, Google buzz, twitter and e-mail. You can also follow the questions through facebook and twitter.

It sounds like part of a “social layer”. Games without a doubt are a major part of social and it will be interesting to view if Google continues to introduce fun little things like this which could actually have a huge impact in terms of user numbers; this truly inimitable game keeps users utilizing Google to search as well; even if it is only “deja Google”.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

Last week; Senator Mike Lee had called for the senate judiciary committee’s antitrust subcommittee for conducting a hearing with Google being identified as the target.

In a declaration; Lee avowed; “Google’s position as the preeminent search engine may be abused so as to disadvantage competing vertical search sites to the detriment of advertisers and internet users.”

“Google’s powerful position as an Internet gatekeeper reduces the company’s incentive to compete with other search engines by providing enhanced privacy protection for consumers,” he also avowed.

Today; we got a declaration from fairsearch coalition; an organization which has been formed only to push the blocking of Google’s planned acquisition of ITA Software.

It avows:

FairSearch.org is working to promote competition, transparency and innovation in online search. We believe that Internet users should pick winners and losers – not search engines. Our members have been passionate advocates for competition in the travel search vertical, a dynamic space that has benefited consumers by, among other things, putting pressure on airlines to keep prices low.

Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Ranking Member Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have demonstrated great vision and leadership in the past week by calling for Congressional scrutiny of Google’s dominance of online search and allegations that it has abused that dominance to advantage its own services and harm competition.

Congress is right to investigate these issues and examine the threats that Google’s unchecked dominance poses to the Internet ecosystem.  As Sen. Lee stated in his letter to Chairman Kohl, “Enforcement of the antitrust laws is especially important for sectors in which the United States has been a leader, such as the e-commerce and online advertising industries.”  The proper enforcement of antitrust laws is a critical linchpin in the Internet’s continued role as a driving force behind the U.S. economy.

Google’s proposed acquisition of ITA Software, as Sen. Lee noted, “could potentially provide Google with the ability to control the travel search vertical market.”  We believe the American consumer deserves a better deal than that. Fairsearch is encouraged that Senators Kohl, Lee and Blumenthal agree that Google’s attempts to expand its dominance through acquisitions bear close examination.

Examination is undoubtedly not an indictment and of course there are two sides to every story. It is worth noting that Google’s main competitor; Microsoft is part of fairsearch coalition.

Last month; Bing introduced its own flight price recommendations right from the search box. While Google is often accused for favoring its own content over its competitors; it is fascinating that Bing is going so far as to recommend its own content before users even get to the search results themselves.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.