Google Changes for November 2010
08 Nov 2010
From October 26th, Google users noticed some dramatic changes on the search results pages, the most striking of which appears to be a fusion of Google Places results within the organic listings. A local map appears in the right column with location indicators that also show next to some of the organic listings.
Google Places in Normal Search Results
In a blog post, Google product manager Jackie Bavaro, explained how the search algorithm changes would appear to users. “Place Search results will begin appearing automatically on Google when we predict you’re looking for local information,” she noted.
The location map has moved to the right and instead of the usual tight “7 Pack” of local results, each local listing gets more room and more details, like description, address and phone number, providing a quick reference for searchers looking for a local business matching their search criteria.
Local businesses that are registered with Google Places stand to be the winners from the recent changes, who would expect to be pushed above the big directories that assist searching by location for these same businesses. This way, it’s the businesses themselves that get more exposure in Google results, rather than the directories that they are listed in that tended to always appear on first page results.
The local listings also show a “reviews” link to Google Places reviews if any exist, as well as a link to the Place page to the right. It would appear from this that Google member business reviews are going to play a more important role and it will be interesting to see whether Google will improve the process by which spurious negative reviews and review retractions can be managed. Google users have been complained about not being able to remove reviews that they have written from Google Places listings.
Ajax Powered Search Results
You may or may not notice that the search results pages are now powered by Ajax. Ajax is a coding language that allows a page to update without having to hit the refresh button and reload the whole web page. You will notice Ajax at work when you click the search button and the URL does not change. This also makes results pages load much, much faster.
Streaming Results as You Type
A recent change to Google SERPs (search engine results pages) is Google Instant. At first Google Instant would automatically suggest search phrases as you typed into the search box. Shortly after, around the end of October, the search results themselves on the page would change as you type. While we know that “Google instant” has been the buzz for the past few weeks as users and Internet marketers come to terms with it, love it or hate it. The most obvious effect of this recent change is the user saves a heap of time when conducting searches and therefore increases productivity.
For search engine optimisation, the instant search streaming in Google may make long-tail search terms less effective, as the search innovation will likely encourage Google users to shorten their search strings. Shorter search strings will therefore most likely become much more competitive. An unintended consequence of Instant Search may be that Small businesses who use Adwords could find themselves squeezed out as shorter search terms become too expensive and instant search makes many long search terms obsolete. For example, if someone is searching for a hotel in Sydney, I may get as far as typing in “hotel” and then stop when seeing the major chains appear in the search results. This is how Adwords could squeeze out the smaller players. Whether this is the case or not we shall see, as I doubt that this would be in the interests of Google’s bottom line.
Instant Search for Mobiles
Instant Search was also deployed on the mobile version of Google. This makes a lot of sense for the mobile platform to save time and dramatically increase efficiency by not only predicting your search but updating the search results in real time as well. This is basically the same as the desktop version of Google Instant, only on mobile phones.
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