Yesterday Google announced “Search, Plus Your World,” a significant change to its search results that will put more emphasis on content within its social network, Google+. The new feature will allow Google robots to crawl data within Google+, and include this information along with public internet data when displaying search results.

The new Google “Personal Results” link delivers information relevant to searchers based on their search behavior, as well as their social connections. This means that two searchers will see different results for the same query. Regular, nonsocial search results will now be presented to users as “Other results.”

In a recent article by Search Engine Land, Googler Amit Singhal states, “The social search algorithm, and the personalized search algorithm are actually one algorithm now, and we are merging it in a way that is very pleasant and useful.” Only users logged in to Google will receive personal results, though each user has the capability to remove social content from their search results by disabling the option.

In October Google announced an increased privacy setting for Google account users that created nervous anticipation among many SEOers. In order to further protect the privacy of Google users signed into their accounts, Google added a default setting that makes browsing done while logged in occur from an encrypted SSL (https://google.com). This privacy update blocks Analytics from providing some search data. If the user is logged in, queries/keywords resulting in a click will be classified as “not provided” in reports. Data from logged in users who select pay-per-click (PPC) ads will still appear in Analytics.

As owner of 65% of the U.S. search market, Google has the ability to change the search engine marketing space with each update it makes; on average, the engine implements 500 potentially game-changing modifications to its search algorithm per year. However, the search giant’s tendency to not disclose the details of its updates and, thus, the potential for bias and violation of antitrust law, has resulted in an investigation into its search technology by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

In an effort to increase its transparency, Google published details of 10 of its most recent updates on its corporate blog. Still, Google Engineer Matt Cutts reminds readers that the brief snippets are merely a glimpse into the hundreds of updates that modify the Google search environment. The changes revealed in the post were specifically chosen because it is unlikely that marketers or website owners will use the details to “game” the system and use black hat techniques to gain higher search rankings.

Some of these most recent updates, however, deserve more attention than a brief snapshot behind the scenes of Google development processes. For example, Google’s October decision to encrypt all searches made by logged in Google users has been estimated to have an average impact on 10% of search traffic. This update comes on top of a recent addition to the 2010 Caffeine indexing system that is estimated to impact 35% of search by prioritizing more recent content. These two instances are a strong example of the power Google wields to create change in the organic search space. Take into consideration that Google will be placing increasing importance on the content of website and landing pages as opposed to the header or menu text, and search engine marketers could be looking at a future rife with significant strategy overhauls.

By Meg Archer, SEM Specialist

When a site links to you, what do you do? 90 gives advice on how to create a linking strategy that is beneficial to your SEO plan as a whole.

To implement a strong SEO strategy, businesses must create a relevant linking strategy.  To be most effective, sometimes businesses or agencies must use another site to syndicate content. As is often the case with third-party listings, this relationship can get tricky. But, if you follow some simple rules, your site will reap the benefits of well planned and executed SEO and linking strategies.

Most obviously, if your content is syndicated on a partner site, ensure it links to your original article. Simon Heseltine, director of SEO at AOL Inc. and writer for Search Engine Watch, supports this recommendation. “This tells the search engines the location of the original, after they determine its duplicate content.” If the syndicate includes a link back to your original content, not simply your homepage, this will build credibility for your site.

However, it is important not to have a link to the syndication on your site because this creates reciprocal linking. We strongly recommend against reciprocal linking because it often comes from link farms, is inorganic and can negatively impact your site ranking in search results.

By Elyse Jarvis, Account Coordinator

As users become more aware of the nature of the “search,” it is important for marketing and advertising programs to implement strategy accordingly.

As marketers, we distinctly understand the benefits of SEO practices, but, as a U.S. survey by Performics concluded, user search behavior and awareness of search tactics are changing.

According to the survey:

More than 75 percent of respondents use search to further research a product or service after seeing an ad. And, contrary to common understanding of search users as only willing to delve so far to find information they are looking for, Performics found:

•    If a searcher doesn’t find what he or she is looking for on the first try, he/she will try, try again.
- 89 percent will modify their search query and try again.
- 89 percent will visit a different search engine.
- 79 percent will sift through multiple results pages to find the inf