GOOGLE & BING & YAHOO!

This section and subsections of the blog will develop into information derived from Google SEO & SEM updates and other resources.

Since I started this section MSN Search has become BING and acquired the core algorithm of Yahoo’s search engine. Yahoo! has entirely dropped Meta Keyword tags from its algorithm and Google has gone on to incorporate tweets on Twitter as part of its live search results (with a lot of screaming about how that isn’t a good idea). Google is also in the process of shifting over to Google Caffeine (a revamped version of Google running side by side with regular Google search results), it’s added “SideWiki” for those who are signed up, and has launched “Google Wave” which Google calls an “online tool for real-time communication screen sharing or any number of collaborative whiteboard applications.  Google has also announced a URL shortening service which will give them a whole new database full of information on what click through rates are, where traffic is coming from that converts best, and (with approximate 90% of web sites using Google Analytics) it will give Google access to more information about the web and how it is used and how it makes money than any other single entity in the world. Very scary.

Imagine that your small company (and millions of others) are selling products on the web so you can live a fairly comfortable life. You work hard and earn a good living. Then all of a sudden along comes Google’s URL Shortening Service and it starts becoming the default shortening service for Google Chrome (Google’s new web browser) and anywhere else they can incorporate it into their own ubiquitous products.  Then Google adds it all to a new database and can analyze all the information about where your clients come from for your products (even within GMail links sent and received), which links get clicked on that convert the most visitors to purchasers.  Next, Google can SELL IT ALL to the highest bidders in your product category and do the same thing to everyone else in all of the different product categories!

I think you can see why that would be scary. Your “secret” sources of website traffic aren’t secret – Google knows exactly which links on which pages were clicked to get sales – and it’s all about money.

Never a dull moment.