So here’s how I see the whole situation. I don’t believe Google is not able to see who’s the original source and who just scrapes others’ content, because they were able to do it before Panda. Also it’s impossible to consider the scrapers and aggregators deserve to be placed ahead of the original sources. So maybe Google did this to make webmasters clean their websites, remove duplicate pages, quit spamming and improve content quality. They can keep this algorithm up for a few months until most of the websites are cleaned up and increase quality, so after that it will be much easier for Google to filter the results and become more relevant.

If this proves to be true, Google will lose all it’s credibility and it already started to, because legit businesses with quality content who relied on Google’s traffic can go bankrupt just because the search engine is playing with them. And from a company that everyone loved, Google becomes more hated than Microsoft, which surprisingly does a really good job lately. And we can see this in the search engine market share too, Microsoft and Yahoo are growing while Google is at best stalling.

Fortunately Bing is really relevant and at least in the last 3 months it has been much more relevant than Google, the latter being full of spam in the search results. And users don’t like crappy spam sites, which will make them switch sides. And I am pretty sure Google knows that, though they hope people will come back once it becomes more relevant, though some of them will be satisfied with Bing and will stay with them, because Microsoft doesn’t screw them how you do, Google.

If you still haven’t lost your trust in Google, let me give you one more reason to. Panda filters duplicate and low quality content, right ? Here’s an example of a scraper outranking Google’s own blog:

So Google considers that topsy.com is more relevant than their own blog for their own content. And I could continue with examples like this all day long. All of Google’s blogs are in the same situation, which is pretty shameful.

For the last 3 months, every webmaster started looking for solution to please the scary Panda, but there isn’t any good one, unfortunately, because it seems like if you have unique quality content you are not good enough for Google. Most scrapers copy the posts from websites’ RSS feeds, so a lot of webmasters shortened the feed to just 30-50 words with a backlink to the website and guess what. Scrapers who copy just that 30-50 words and also link to the original website still outrank it. It doesn’t matter the original website has a comprehensive 500 – 2000 words article, it’s still not as good as the short excerpt the scrapers copy. So no, there’s nothing you can do about it. The only one who can help you is Google and it will eventually restore the old algorithm, but nobody knows when or what they are going to do further.

If you still don’t believe Google does this on purpose, then please read their latest update on the Panda algorithm. There are some criteria websites must meet in order to please Google’s bot. And I wasn’t able to find a single one that scrapers or aggregators meet, though they still outrank the original sources.

Maybe you think I’m just another idiot that wants to begin a conspiratorial theory and if you do, please read the post again and try to find a better reason for what’s happening right now.

I believe it’s either a big Google bug or they’re currently working on something and doing some tests. Something similar to this happened a while ago when it was indexing the posts, but it wasn’t ranking them at all, though it happened at a lower level than now.

Another strange thing is that almost all the latest indexed posts from these blogs contain Feedburner’s variables, the “utm_source,” “utm_medium,” and “utm_campaign.” Some believe this might be the problem, though I don’t consider this being a problem, as links like these ones have been indexed for a lot of time.

Unfortunately Google hasn’t made any official statement, so we can only guess that it’s a major bug and hope they will fix it soon enough.

One reason I can think about is that Google started following all the links and every blog now has a lot of duplicate pages, because of the “utm_source,” “utm_medium,” and “utm_campaign.” These variables differ from the source of traffic, so the utm_source can be Twitter, Feed, Friendfeed and so on. One way to solve this is to use the canonical link tag.

Update:

In the meantime it seems like Google started indexing Mashable and TechCrunch again, though I’ve found 3 duplicates of one article indexed for Mashable. Check it out here or in the screenshot at the end of the post.

I would really like to know your opinion.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to try it out, because it doesn’t appear to me, whatever I tried doing.

It seems like there is a preview button and I hope that the previews are not triggered by a simple mouse-over, because it would be very disturbing. I think this feature might help users to see if what they are searching for is there or not, and it might also decrease the CTR of spam sites that don’t offer quality content.

Currently we can’t know if they are going to implement it world wide or just forget about it, though they are testing it right now, so they do have something in mind.

Take a look at the screenshots below to see what I’m talking about.

via BlogStorm

Google Instant does not only suggest you long-tail keywords, but also show you the results for the specific long-tail keywords, which means you will get more SERP impressions. I am not ranking for the generic keywords, but I am #1 for all the long-tail that interest me and now I’m confident I surpassed all the other websites that rank for the generic keyword, because they don’t get impressions anymore.

Unfortunately, I can’t share the keywords with you, because it’s a very less developed niche and a great money earner, but you should use it to increase your  traffic on your websites too.

I will offer you some tips on how to do this in a future article this week.

My first impression is that it’s really useful and it might help both the users and webmasters, while hopefully it will bury spammers. Usually spammers are ranking for very rare keywords or typos and now Google doesn’t virtually let you search for a typo or a very rare keyword, suggesting you what it believes you want.

Why it might help webmasters ? Suggesting them what to search for, it should offer them more relevant results for their interests, which is a win-win situation for the user and webmaster.

Unfortunatelly, those are just my guesses because I need more time to research it and the changes caused by it. Also the users need to get used by it, because they seem to be confused at the moment, and I’ve been too when I first saw it.

I would really love to find out your opinion about the new Google Instant, so hit me with your comments.

Google Caffeine

Caffeine doesn’t bring huge changes to the algorithm, though it will index pages faster and treat spam more severely.

Unfortunately, the exact release date wasn’t disclosed and neither the datacenter it will go live on, though it shouldn’t be too hard to figure it out. Stay put and I’ll let you know as soon as I find out !

In the future there are many chances Google will use this voting system in it’s algorithm to rank websites, but it surely won’t base on this too much, because it’s much easier to game than using older techniques.

We shall see in the future what they have in mind, it might be a totally mess and take it out, but nothing’s sure.

Here’s a snapshot:

Technology News

I talked a lot about this today with a lot of people and we didn’t manage to get to a conclusion, because if the SERP remains like this, Google’s relevancy ends today. There are many querys where all quality websites went down and new, spam, and irrelevant websites took their place.

Considering the conditions and ways Google updated it’s SERPs today, I will have to call this the “Google Shaker”, because it seems like Google introduced the SERP in a shaker and shaked it.

“Google Shaker” seems to happen much more in local searches more than on Google.com. Until now I have seen many people complaining that Google.ro, Google.ru, and Google.co.uk is totally screwed up.

I thought all day at this and researched especially on Google.ro, being the country I live in and it might be a mistake, a Halloween joke or a test, because the SERPs definitely can’t remain this way. Other way, Google’s relevancy is gone, at least in those countries and a lot of CEOs will run mad, along with us, the SEOs, because our clients will be more than angry.

I would love to get your feedback on this and maybe we can find an explanation and a solution. Did Google really changed the algorithm in such a drastic way ?

Yet he stated clearly that URLs ended in .exe or .0 were not indexed at all until a few days ago. Now it seems Google does index them but we can’t be sure it gives them full trust and doesn’t penalize them.

SEOmoz has faced this problem with their Web 2.0 Awards, that had the url “http://www.seomoz.org/web.2.0″, which finished in .0 .

So take care how you format your URL to be search engine friendly and don’t get penalized.

Have you ever faced an issue with an improper formatted URL not to be indexed by Google ?

Now it shows how much a keyword is searched, in comparison to the average searches since 2004 until the time you perform the query. For example if today the keyword ‘iPhone’ has been searched two times more than the average times it was searched daily from 2004, Google Trends will show ’2′.

Along with this, now you also have the possibility to download the trends as a CSV file. All you need is to be logged into your Google account.

via Google Blog