No Bull, Just Honest Discussions

Google Panda has struck again, and the after effects are still taking place. According to a webzine called The State Column, their site reported a 98% drop in traffic in March. While they suspected a "glitch", they later found it this was merely the after effects of a major algorithm update—and their site is not alone. Many other sites are reporting traffic and ranking drop offs, which are presumably occurring because of low quality.

What seems to be the cause? While the original explanation of Google is that they are trying to offer results with greater prestige, (i.e. better writing, less ads and more trusted sites) some webmasters are speculating that altered permalinks, duplicated content and altering canonical tags could be problematic.

What is the difference between Yahoo and Bing's algorithm? If you follow SEO news, you might think that the two companies are one in the same, since Yahoo took over Bing just a few years ago. In fact, Yahoo Search even claims to be powered by Bing. However, being "powered" by Bing or by Google really doesn't mean anything. Practically every minor search engine out there is powered by Google. If you were to compare Gibiru (an anonymous, uncensored search engine) with Google (just plain old Google) many of the same results would be identical.

This points to the fact that just because a search engine "powers" another one, doesn't mean that the new search site is above manipulating the results to its favor. Most search engines have human editors in addition to a unique algorithm. So, many of the algorithm differences will be subtle, if not completely unnoticeable to human eyes. Nevertheless, user experience documents some more than subtle differences between Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google is gaining a reputation as favoring back links, while Yahoo seems to put more relevance on title tags. Yahoo also has that reciprocity thing going on, rewarding sites that pay to get listed on Yahoo Business, and that earn other Yahoo-exclusive links, like Yahoo Answers, Yahoo News and so on.

Local SEO is a booming business right now, and that is mainly thanks to three major innovators: Google, Facebook and Apple. Though Apple's efforts were truly innovative, plenty of other mobile and PDA companies have since risen, bringing us high-tech portable phones and digital multimedia players. All of these entities are making local SEO a big business.

Just look at Google Maps and Google Earth, which can now help consumers, traveling locally within a city or town, find a business of their choosing based on keyword search. They can simply type in a keyword search into their mobile device and be pointed via GPS where to go. Google Places is another avenue to explore, as business owners can now create locally based information (including company info, photos and even videos) that earns high local search rankings.