The Search Engine Blog

The new Google redesign has a large number of webmasters complaining about serious losses in traffic. You may have noticed the new logo, but poke about and you’ll see a lot of other changes. What else changed under the hood that could impact traffic? Time will tell.

Google Referrals Way Down Since the SERP LayOut Change?

A number of sites are crying MayDay as their long tail keywords traffic falls during Google’s latest updates. Of course someone must be doing better to fill that void. Funny how they aren’t complaining.

Long tail searches are searches four or more words long. Fat belly are two to three words. Now you’ll be able to interpret the content on the site link below.

Google MAYDAY Updates – SERP Changes May 2010

Bring on the doom and gloom soothsayers. Many webmasters are claiming that they are seeing the Google caffeine update on about 80% of Google’s datacenters. Whether it is an update or not, there are definite changes going on in the Google indexes and it is affecting site rankings.
Google Updates and SERP Changes – April 2010

Search funnels is an analytic tool Google has implemented that will help show adwords traffic in ways you couldn’t before. If someone searches and clicks on an ad to your site, reads it and then leaves, it shows no conversion. That’s accurate so far. Let’s say they return to your site via a different ad. They purchase giving that second word the conversion credit. Both words deserve credit for bringing you the sale. Funnel reporting will provide that missing bit of information that better helps you determine what is working for you…..and makes Google and you more money.
Search Funnels – AdWords Help

What Yahoo! calls a Weather Report others just call updates. Ranking changes and shuffling of your listings are in the forecast.
Yahoo! Search Blog » Blog Archive » Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Update

Be careful what you post on MySpace. It will instantly be indexed by Google. I see a flood of get rich quick scheme on MySpace.

Official Google Blog: This week in search 2/21/10

Yahoo! is plunging headfirst into having Microsoft’s Bing take over their search services. Yahoo! ad programs and webmaster tools will be transisitioning to Microsoft’s services. Are we ready? Yup. This is no surprise. Yahoo! has been falling flat on their face for some time now.

Yahoo! Transition Center – Home

Google wants to also be your ISP. Yes, connect to the Internet using Google. Say hello to more ads and goodbye to privacy. Is this really a good idea? Is there really any privacy now?
Official Google Blog: Think big with a gig: Our experimental fiber network

Google is rolling out Buzz into your Gmail account. What is the buzz? It’s a social tool to share photos, videos, etc……yawn. Another social tool. I haven’t tried it yet, but it seems like a stripped down version of Wave.
Google Buzz

If you are still using IE6 and try to access GoogleDocs and other online Google services, you may discover that you can’t. Google is dropping IE6 support. If you are still using such an old browser, it should not be a total surprise that you’d have issues. Web designers are rejoicing.

Official Google Enterprise Blog: ​Modern browsers for modern applications