periscopeUP » Google

Google Update Due After the Holidays

Dan Kaplan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:01:08 +0000

Google announced recently that it would be postponing its “Cafeine” update until after the holidays. They say this will have a minimum effect on search ranks, but as with all their past updates, our clients are sure to be affected in some way.

One important change is Google will be giving more results based on up-to-the-minute breaking events, to compete with Twitter and Facebook’s real time search initiatives.

We appreciate Google holding off on making this change, to put webmasters at ease that no rankings will change until after the holiday shopping season.

More resources:

Matt Cutts’ announcement
Mashable’s tests of the release (including notes about keyword relevancy)
Test Caffeine on the Google Sandbox
Fun conspiracy reading

Google polices paid links by bloggers

Dan Kaplan — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:59:02 +0000

According to Search Engine Watch, Google’s Spam Czar Matt Cutts says Google will punish bloggers who don’t use the no follow tag on the links included in paid posts.

I interpret this move as Google’s way of making sure bloggers are open about what links and content (for things like product reviews) they were paid to include.

This will surely have wide ranging implications on the SEO of blogs and how marketing agencies will use bloggers to promote their clients’ products and services.

My only hope is that Google will clearly clarify what they define as a paid link. For example, if a blogger recieves a tee-shirt for blogging about a product, are links they include considered “paid” ?

I also wonder how will Google determine if a link was paid?