This list is particularly interesting because of all the upheaval happening this month, what with Panda updates 3.5 and 3.6 occurring in an eight-day span, along with the Penguin update and a Google screwup related to parked domains. Yeah, April was a crazy month for SEO folks.

As always, there’s a lot to digest and the most important items don’t always reveal themselves right away. But here’s a look at the items that caught my eye after a first read-through of Google’s blog post.

Bigger, Tiered Index

Perhaps the biggest news is that Google has increased the size of its base index — the collection of web pages and documents it can show as search results — by 15 percent.

Similarly, Google also says it’s launched a new “index tier.”

Increase base index size by 15%. [project codename "Indexing"] The base search index is our main index for serving search results and every query that comes into Google is matched against this index. This change increases the number of documents served by that index by 15%. *Note: We’re constantly tuning the size of our different indexes and changes may not always appear in these blog posts.

New index tier. [launch codename "cantina", project codename "Indexing"] We keep our index in “tiers” where different documents are indexed at different rates depending on how relevant they are likely to be to users. This month we introduced an additional indexing tier to support continued comprehensiveness in search results.

That sounds almost like Google’s old “supplemental index” system that launched in 2003, and it may be tempting to say the supplemental index has returned, or something along those lines. But, as far as I recall, Google never said the supplemental index was going away; it said they’d stop using the “Supplemental Results” label on search results that came from it.

SEO & Ranking Updates

Google has also announced numerous updates that relate to how documents are ranked, updates that sound like they’re at least related to — if not part of — the larger Panda and Penguin updates that are already well known.

Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. [launch codename "Bi02sw41"] One of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether and how your search terms appear on the pages you’re searching. This change improves the way those terms are scored.

Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"] We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better.

More authoritative results. We’ve tweaked a signal we use to surface more authoritative content.

More domain diversity. [launch codename "Horde", project codename "Domain Crowding"] Sometimes search returns too many results from the same domain. This change helps surface content from a more diverse set of domains.

If I were to guess, I’d think that the first two items above could be related to “spun” content — one of the practices that Google likely considers to be a hallmark of low-quality content. But that’s just a guess on my part.

The last two items — authoritative results and domain diversity — almost sound contradictory. At least to me. On a Friday afternoon during a long week with international travel.

Sitelinks Updates

There are several changes related to Google’s sitelinks and “megasitelinks” — the additional links that show up below a top-ranking result for some queries.

If you spend time trying to optimize for sitelinks (and if you have an authoritative site, it’s probably a good idea to be doing that), these changes are worth reading closely. Here are those changes, word-for-word from Google’s post:

“Sub-sitelinks” in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename "thanksgiving"] This improvement digs deeper into megasitelinks by showing sub-sitelinks instead of the normal snippet.

Better ranking of expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] This change improves the ranking of megasitelinks by providing a minimum score for the sitelink based on a score for the same URL used in general ranking.

Sitelinks data refresh. [launch codename "Saralee-76"] Sitelinks (the links that appear beneath some search results and link deeper into the site) are generated in part by an offline process that analyzes site structure and other data to determine the most relevant links to show users. We’ve recently updated the data through our offline process. These updates happen frequently (on the order of weeks).

Less snippet duplication in expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] We’ve adopted a new technique to reduce duplication in the snippets of expanded sitelinks.

The first item seems to be saying that sub-sitelinks may show up instead of a text snippet, which I think means that some search results could have two layers of sitelinks — megasitelinks below the main result, and then sub-sitelinks below one of the megasitelinks. I’ve not seen anything like that yet.

Local-related Changes

There are a couple changes related to local/geo searches and search results.

Improvements to local navigational searches. [launch codename "onebar-l"] For searches that include location terms, e.g. [dunston mint seattle] or [Vaso Azzurro Restaurant 94043], we are more likely to rank the local navigational homepages in the top position, even in cases where the navigational page does not mention the location.

Country identification for webpages. [launch codename "sudoku"] Location is an important signal we use to surface content more relevant to a particular country. For a while we’ve had systems designed to detect when a website, subdomain, or directory is relevant to a set of countries. This change extends the granularity of those systems to the page level for sites that host user generated content, meaning that some pages on a particular site can be considered relevant to France, while others might be considered relevant to Spain.

In the first item, Google seems to be saying that it’s able to able to identify the correct local result for specific navigational searches — such as a search for a specific local restaurant — even if the site/page is poorly optimized for local search.

It’s reminiscent of the “Venice” update earlier this year which involved Google launching ways to better correlate web pages/documents to their locations.

Miscellaneous Updates

In addition to the items I’ve highlighted above, read through Google’s post for these other items that caught my eye:

• A change that should reduce amount of paginated results showing on a search results page.
• Two changes related to snippets, including one which promises to show more text from the beginning of pages.
• Three changes related to freshness — fresh results and freshness signals, and one that ignores fresh content if it’s deemed low quality. (There’s also an Autocomplete change designed to reduce the visibility of low-quality results.)
• A change that Google says will help it show more informative/concise titles in its search results. (For what it’s worth, just about every SEO that I know wishes Google wouldn’t change titles at all.)
• Improvements in how Google uses previous search activity to determine your intent as you continue to search.

That’s a lot to digest and something else may have caught your attention as being important. The comments are open, so let us know what stands out for you as you look through Google’s April search changes.

So why is it a “secret”?

Historically, it has been quite difficult to get Google Shopping set up, and it was almost certain that you’d need to hire a company that specializes in running shopping feed programs. While I still highly recommend seeking out experts with specialized experience here, it is actually quite possible to begin this process on your own. Here’s how:

First, you will need to open a Google Merchant account within Google. If you already have a company Google Adwords account you use, I would use the same login credentials to open the Google Merchant Account to keep your accounts and management process streamlined.

Once you set up your account, you will need to verify and claim your url, create your product data automated feed and launch the store.

Here is some in-depth information on how you can set up your Google Merchant Store.

Once you are running a Google Shopping program on your own or through a provider, there are some great opportunities available for advertisers that are on Google Adwords and are also running Google Shopping.

Google Product Extensions

Product Extensions are an excellent way to enhance your existing AdWords ads. It’s a great tool to increase click through rates and drive more sales.

Product Extensions are based on your product feed. They will show in a plus box under your regular text ad on the search results when the search query typed in by the user is related to one or more products on your Google Merchant Center account.

This is a core reason to  keep your product feed updated with as much information as possible about your products. The more complete and updated your feed is, the higher the chances your Product Extensions will display with your text ad.

Just like a normal text ad, your Product Extensions ads are also charged on a CPC basis, which means you will pay the same price per click regardless if the user clicks on your text ad or on one of your Product Extensions.

You can track Product Extension metrics on a campaign level through your AdWords interface. Here, you can view impressions, clicks, CTR, cost, AVG position, conversions etc. You can also track Product Extensions revenue using Google Analytics, but you will need to add a unique tracking code to your destination URL on the product feed. This way, you can identify revenue that came from clicks to your Product Extensions versus your text ads.

Setting up Product Extensions on your AdWords account is quite simple. Once you have your product feed uploaded to your Google Merchant Account center, just click on a campaign and click on the “Ad Extensions” tab. Once there, just select the “New Extension” button and choose your product feed.

Keep in mind that if you are running Site-Link Extensions simultaneously for the same campaign, your Site-Link Extensions are more likely to show than your Product Extensions as they have a higher priority in terms of extensions rankings. Sometimes both extensions will display at the same time but it doesn’t occur very often.

So, if you really plan on gathering accurate data from testing Product Extensions, make sure you disable all other extensions for that campaign.

PLA’s – Product Listing Ads

Product Listing Ads campaigns are fairly easy to set up, and you can manage them through your Adwords interface or Adwords Editor just like any other campaign. PLA campaigns, unlike your normal text ad campaigns, are not keyword-based. Google will choose to show your ads based on the quality and relevance of your product feed.

This means you want to make sure your product feed includes as many details as possible about your products, such as product name, description, color, size, images, price, etc. Make sure that your destination URLs are updated constantly and are taking your customers to the correct product page.

Even though your PLA campaigns are not keyword-based, it’s important to understand how different products and categories are performing. The best way to do this is to split your campaign into Ad Groups. One best practice to employ when creating Ad Groups to your PLA campaign is to separate them according to the product labels column on your product feed. This will allow you to easily manage your bids and ads.

To set up the Ad Groups with the product labels, just click on one of the Ad Groups and go to your “Auto targets” tab on AdWords. Once you’re there, you will want to click on the “Add product target” button and select “Add a group of products.”

From the combo box below, you will choose “adwords label” and on the input box just type the name of the label. Click on validate, and a green check sign should appear. That means your label is set correctly.

Now, just repeat the process for all of your Ad Groups. If you get an error message saying that your label is not validating, it could be that you have your product label name typed incorrectly or that you have too recently uploaded your product feed. It often takes up to 48 hours for a new feed to be available to validate your labels.

Now that you have your campaign set up and ad groups in place and validated, you must also create Ads for your PLA campaigns. PLA ads are a bit different from your regular text ad copy.

A PLA ad consists of a single line and only allows up to 45 characters. So you want to make sure you create a very concise and direct message. If you offer free shipping or some type of discount, make sure you state that on your ad. You can also run multiple ads per ad group.

Here is an example of PLA ads for “adidas shoes”

As you employ these tactics, continually test messaging and visuals to determine what works best for your brand and products within the Google Shopping arena. I hope to have demystified this rather easy-to-deploy channel, as it is a prime opportunity for incremental traffic and competitive leadership in the search space.

Do you have any Google Shopping “secrets” of your own? Please do reach out and let me know what is working for you, or where you’d like to see guidance in future columns.

Here is a picture:

A Google spokesperson confirmed that these are indeed new and are “currently rolling out everywhere this week.”

Google has changed the look, layout, and number of sitelinks under a search result drastically over the years. This change is pretty minor, only showing a small little arrow on the left side of the sitelinks.

More Sitelinks Articles:

• Google Announces “Megasitelinks,” Image Search Improvements & Better Byline Dates
• If It Looks Like Google Sitelinks Have Expanded, It’s Just Your Imagination
• Official: Google Sitelinks Expands To 12 Pack
• Google’s 12 Sitelink Experiment Returns
• Google’s New Social Sitelinks
• Google Testing New Sitelink Formats?
• Google Rolls Out Sitelinks Display For Forums
• Google “Jump To” Links Within Search Snippets
• Google Sitelinks Now In Snippets
• Google AdWords Has Their Own Flavor Of Sitelinks
• Google’s One line Sitelinks Now Support HTML Anchors

The tool — a bookmarklet that works in your browser — changes three parts of Search Plus Your World that currently shows information only from Google Plus. These are:

• People & Pages results
• Google+ Sitelinks
• Google+ Suggestions In Autocomplete

The tool can be found on the Focus On The User web site. It was created, as the site says, by engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, who in turn consulted with other unnamed social networking companies. The “Don’t Be Evil” name of the tool comes from Google’s philosophy of wanting to focus on what’s best for users, rather than what’s best for Google.

The companies behind the tool feel Google’s hasn’t focused on what’s best for its users with Search Plus Your World. They have a good point. But the tool makes this point better than all the debates that have happened so far around Search Plus Your Word, because it shows what Google could have done to better serve searchers, if it had wanted to.

Below, how to install the tool and how it works, once you’ve done so, along with a revisiting of some of the issues it highlights.

Installing The Don’t Be Evil Bookmarklet

To get the tool, head to the site and look for the “Try a more relevant Google” button:

Clicking the button will make a new window appear, with a “don’t be evil” button that’s visible:

You click and hold on that button, then drag it to the bookmarks bar in your browser (if you don’t see your bookmarks bar, look in your browser’s options to make this visible):

Once it’s installed, you’ll see it on your on your bookmarks bar:

When you search on Google, you push that button to transform your results, as I’ll cover next. By the way, I’ve tested this with both Google Chrome and Firefox. It should also work with Safari. It doesn’t work with Internet Explorer.

Problem: “People & Pages” Powered By Google+

One of the biggest issues I’ve had with Search Plus (my shorthand name for Search Plus Your World) was the new “People and Pages on Google+” results that appear for some searches. These can show up even if you don’t have a Google+ account or are logged out of Google entirely.

These are the first search results that I’ve ever seen on Google that haven’t been inclusive of sources beyond Google, when those sources are available. To understand more about this, and how it’s such a major departure for Google, see my previous post, To Understand Google Favoritism, Think If Google+ Were YouTube.

Aside from favoring Google in a way that I’ve never seen before, I’ve felt that the results simply weren’t providing the best information to searchers at Google, especially given the prime real estate being given to them. My previous story, Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy, explains more about that.

The reason for the relevancy gap was simple. Google+ still lacks many important or notable people that might be on the other social networks. Indeed, until last week, Lady Gaga wasn’t on Google+ despite being one of the most followed people on Twitter and Facebook. Her absence meant she’d never have a chance at being one of the music recommendations for the People & Places results that Google was showing.

Including other social accounts in People & Pages results would, as I’ve written repeatedly, done what I expect of Google as a search engine, delivered a great search experience. From one of my past posts:

I’d love to see is Google retool the social suggestions that come up, so they aren’t simply Google+ “People & Pages” results injected into Google but more inclusive of other social sites, as well. Because that type of inclusive search product is what Google does well, and what we expect for the company to provide.

Now the engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have done what I expected Google to do, create a social suggestions search engine. Let’s see some examples.

Solution: “People & Pages” Powered By Google Search

Let’s start with a search for music. On the left, what you see from Google’s Search Plus. On the right, how things change after you click the Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet:

The first set of arrows at the top show how “People and Pages on Google+” is changed instead to “People and Pages from the Social Web.”

The second set of arrows shows how for Britney Spears, rather than her Google+ profile being shown (where she has 1.6 million followers), her Twitter account is displayed (where she has 12.6 million followers). Underneath her Twitter account, links to her MySpace, Facebook and Tumblr accounts are also shown.

The third set of arrows shows how for Snoop Dogg, rather than his Google+ profile being shown (with 1.4 million followers), his Twitter account (with 6.2 million followers) is shown. Underneath that, links to his MySpace, Facebook and Google+ accounts are displayed.

I’ll explain more about how each profile gets selected, but first, let’s do some more examples. Here’s a search for cars:

For this search, the Google+ page for Ferrari (6,500 followers) is changed to Ferrari’s Facebook page (5.6 million followers), with its YouTube page as an alternative link. Toyota’s Google+ page (180,000 followers) is also changed to the Toyota Facebook page (700,000 followers).

One of my favorite examples to show the failing of Google’s current system is a search for Facebook:

On the left, Google’s regular listings suggest Mark Zuckerberg’s Google+ profile as something people should follow. It really is Zuckerberg’s official page, with over 600,000 followers. However, Zuckerberg has never posted to it since creating that profile shortly after Google+ launched.

On the right, the Don’t Be Evil button transforms that listing into something useful, a pointer to Zuckerberg’s Facebook page (his Google+, Twitter and Quora pages are listed as alternatives.

Also notice the arrows. In this case, I was signed-in to Google+, which is why an “Add to circles” button appear next to the Google+ result. However, when the result was transformed to show a Facebook listing, I got an indication showing that I was already following Zuckerberg on Facebook (if I wasn’t, a Like button allowing me to follow him would have appeared).

One more example, this time to show that there’s more intelligence going on that just stripping out Google+ links and swapping them for any other network. Here’s a search for Google:

The first suggestion is for Google’s own page on Google+, which is changed to Google’s page on Twitter. Notice how there’s a “Follow” button next to the Twitter link, as well.

Under that is Larry Page. His listing isn’t changed. It remains pointing to his Google+ page, which makes sense. To the best of my knowledge, that’s the only place he’s active socially. While LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts are also shown for him, none of those seem to be real accounts for him.

What’s The Most Relevant Social Account To Show? Ask Google!

We could debate which is the most best social account to show for each of the examples above in various ways, such as:

• Should it be based on followers? If so, in many cases, accounts on the established social networks of Twitter and Facebook would easily trump Google+ accounts, though not always.
• Should it be based on activity? Britney hasn’t posted to Google+ since January 18. Her last tweets are more recent, as of January 21. Does that count for more?
• Should it be based on engagement? Even if Britney hasn’t been on Google+ recently, perhaps her engagement with fans is better there?

Rather than try to figure all this out — and potentially come under accusations they were selecting metrics to favor their own social networks — the developers of the Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet decided to let Google itself figure out which social account was most relevant.

For example, let’s go back to how the listing for Snoop Dogg was changed:

What happens is that the bookmarklet looks at which accounts are listed initially by Google in the People & Pages section. It then does a search for the people or companies listed to find which social profiles Google itself believes are most relevant, in the first 100 results.

In the case of Snoop Dogg, the bookmarklet sees that he’s listed as a People & Pages suggestion for a search on “music.” It then conducts a search for “snoop dogg” on Google, to see which social account Google lists first for him.

As you can see above, Twitter is the first social account shown, so the bookmarklet rewrites Snoop Dogg’s suggestion to link to his Twitter account. His MySpace account is found next, so it’s listed as the first alternative. Facebook is found after that, so it’s the second alternative. Google+ is found after that, so it becomes the third alternative.

According to the tool’s FAQ page, it checks for links from any of these social networks:

• CrunchBase (weird, I wouldn’t consider this a social network)
• Github
• Google+
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• FriendFeed
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Quora
• Stack Overflow
• Tumblr
• Twitter

All the information the tool finds comes solely from Google itself, even the profile pictures, which are generated using Google’s own rich snippets testing tool, as the FAQ page explains.

Because only Google’s own information is being used, the tool can’t patch up a key weakness, which is that all the suggestions are initially based on people who are in Google Plus.

For example, you will never get Katy Perry as a music suggestion, despite her being one of the most followed musicians on Facebook or Twitter. That’s because she’s not on Google+, so she has no chance of appearing as a suggestion to music-related queries. If she doesn’t get suggested, then the tool can’t add her.

Problem: Autocomplete Profiles Only For Google+

Another feature of Search Plus that favors Google+ is within Google’s search box. As you type, the autocomplete feature of Google Instant will suggest things you should search for. For notable or prominent people, these suggestions may also include a link to their Google+ profile. For example, consider this search for Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg:

Just typing in the word “sheryl”  – when I was completely logged out of Google — was enough for it to suggest that I select her Google+ page, where Sandberg last posted in September. That’s pretty preferential treatment. Why should that be suggested over Sandberg’s personal web site or another social profile?

Solution: Expand The Choices

The Don’t Be Evil button developers call the autocomplete suggestions “typeahead” results. When you use their button, the typeahead suggestion is changed. For Sandberg, her Facebook profile is shown:

The same logic I explained above is used to do this. Whatever Google lists as the first social network for a search on Sandberg’s name, that profile is used to go into the autocomplete box (though for me, it should be her CrunchBase profile there, not her Facebook profile).

I’ve covered this in my earlier articles, but I’ll stress it again. Pointing to Google+ profiles — and no other profiles — was a significant change to favor Google+ than how Google operated in the past. Consider this:

That’s where I’m starting a search for “facebook.” I’ve only entered the “face” part and, already, Google suggests that I go directly to the Facebook home page from within the search box itself.

Google started offering these types of suggestions back in 2008 and 2009. You can still see it working today, if you disable Google Instant predictions within your search settings. Typing in Amazon, or Best Buy or New York Times brings up other examples of this.

Most people have Google Instant on, since it’s the default, so they never see these type of “old” web link suggestions. Instead, they get the new Google+ profile ones. Google didn’t have to only push these, but it chose to.

Problem: Sitelinks Only For Google+

Ever done a search and noticed a bunch of listings “indented” under the main listing? Those are called sitelinks. For listings associated with Google+ accounts, they pick up special sitelinks, their last two posts on Google Plus. Here an example for TV Guide, what someone who is logged out of Google would see:

The two arrows point to the special Google+ sitelinks that are appearing. This type of thing existed before Search Plus Your World rolled out, though I can’t recall any formal announcement of it. Certainly when Direct Connect for Google+ came out, there was nothing that highlighted these sitelinks as part of that.

In fact, the addition of them feels very odd, given how just over a year ago, Google was showing sitelinks of a different sort for other social networks. For example, here’s how a search for Twitter was suggesting people our news editor Barry Schwartz should follow:

Solution: New Social Sitelinks

The Don’t Be Evil button replaces the Google+ sitelinks similarly to how other changes are done. Here’s TV Guide again:

Rather than two Google+ sitelinks being shown, only a single one appears. In this case, it’s a link to TV Guide’s Twitter profile, since that’s the first profile that the tool finds when doing a Google search for “tv guide.” A link to TV Guide’s Facebook profile follows as an alternative.

Which Way Forward?

As I’ve explained in many articles over the past two weeks, I’ve been pretty disturbed by Google’s promotion of Google+ within its search pages.

The “People & Pages” results, if they’re intended as a promotion for Google+, still come across as if they are regular search results — results that I think Google users assume come from across the web. They do not. The come only from Google+ itself.

You could argue with better labeling, that type of promotion might work better. But that still leaves questions about why Google+ profiles are being pushed within Google’s search suggestions, rather than links to other pages from across the web. The links shown there aren’t necessarily the most relevant suggestions to be shown.

Google, in particular its executive chairman Eric Schmidt, has argued that it doesn’t have all the data it needs to include other social services in the way it does for Google Plus. The failure to reach a deal with Facebook; the failure to renew a deal with Twitter, these have prevented the social signals it needs from being used, Google has said.

The Don’t Be Evil tool demonstrates this isn’t the case, that there are social signals that Google already can find which could be used, if it wants.

Of course, if Google had done so what the Don’t Be Evil tool is doing now — incorporated links to Facebook and Twitter after they’ve rejected deals — potentially Google could have been accused of scraping content from them without permission. Indeed, that was one of the things Facebook suggested last year in what was widely seen as a smear campaign.

I put that to Facebook when I talked with the company last week about the tool. I was told Facebook saw a difference between taking public signals to build a competing social service — as it felt Google was doing — and using those signals as part of a search service that points outward.

I was also assured that if Google wanted to do the types of things that the Don’t Be Evil tool is now doing, Facebook wouldn’t complain.

We’ll see. I’ll be following up with Google. In the meantime, you can read more at the Focus On The User web site, and there’s also an overview video available:

Click here to view the embedded video.

John Battelle also has a nice write-up with his perspective here, and Techmeme has a round-up of coverage from others.

Google’s Unusual Balancing Act

It can seem confusing — even hypocritical — for services like Facebook and Twitter to not release their public data more fully to anyone (including Google) without demanding deals, then complain they don’t feel represented enough in search results.

It can also seem odd that both of those companies might favor themselves in their own social networks, not include Google+, yet demand that Google somehow be “fair” to them.

The challenge Google faces, however, is that it operates both a social network and a search engine. The Google+ social network does compete with Facebook and Twitter, and anyone would expect that it should favor itself.

The Google search engine, however, was founded on the idea that it should be fair to all. That is, after all, what a good search engine should do — provide the best results, not the results best for its parent company. The continued Google+ification of Google’s search results is bringing that fairness into question.

Potentially, that’s an anti-trust issue (and Facebook, as the dominant social service, might find itself similarly under pressure to open up to competitors). But anti-trust issues aside, it’s simply a trust issue. Will users trust that Google’s results are doing the right thing by them?

I strongly encourage anyone feeling lost in all this debate and some of the tricky issues it presents to see my post from last week, FAQ: What’s The Debate About Google’s Search Plus Your World?

Finally, you can expect we’ll be taking a close look at the huge changes that Google+ is unleashing in the search marketing space at our upcoming SMX West conference in San Jose Feb. 28-March 1, in particular during these sessions:

• Getting Personal, Part 1: How Google & Bing Personalize With Social Connections
• Getting Personal, Part 2: How Google & Bing Personalize With Search History & Geography
• SEO For Google+ & Google Search
• Ask The Search Engines – Open Q&A Forum

Be sure to see the full agenda and register soon to save the most on a ticket.

Postscript: See A Proposal For Social Network Détente for some further reflections on moving ahead from today’s events.

Related Articles

• Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”
• Search Engines Should Be Like Santa From “Miracle On 34th Street”
• To Understand Google Favoritism, Think “If Google+ Were YouTube”
• Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy
• Pimping Google+ In Search Works: Lady Gaga Finally Joins Google+
• Larry Page Ousts Mark Zuckerberg As Most Popular On Google+
• How Google Instant’s Autocomplete Suggestions Work
• How Facebook Enables The Google Social “Scraping” It’s Upset About
• Schmidt: Google+ Not Favored, Happy To Talk Twitter & Facebook Integration
• Google Now Forcing All New Users To Create Google+ Enabled Accounts
• “Ask On Google+” Links Appearing In Google’s Search Results
• Google To Close Social Graph API, Not OpenSocial
• FAQ: What’s The Debate About Google’s Search Plus Your World?

Google just began doing monthly overviews of its search changes in November, and this latest overview includes 30 tweaks that happened in December. Some were announced previously, but there are several interesting ones that weren’t. Here’s a look at a few of them.

Megasitelinks (Localized, Too)

That’s Google’s internal project name for what the post say is an algorithmic improvement for selecting sitelinks. Google’s post doesn’t offer much color about why the name “Megasitelinks” was chosen for this update, but it does share one interesting new implementation: localized sitelinks.

“…we may show sitelinks specific to your metropolitan region, which you can control with your location setting.”

Google has been making a fair amount of updates to its Sitelinks in recent months. We’ve noticed them showing up not only on home pages, but also more frequently on sub-pages. Sitelinks have also expanded to include Google+ data in certain cases, as we reported back in November. And last summer there was the addition of the 12-pack of sitelinks.

I’ve yet to find a query that produces localized sitelinks, but not for lack of trying. (Feel free to leave a comment below if you’ve found/seen one.)

Image Search Improvements

There are two items related to Google Image Search in today’s post:

1. Improved quality signals — Google says its image search algorithm is not only looking for relevant images, but also “linking to the highest quality source pages.” Landing page quality is now an algorithmic signal for image search.

2. Spam detection — Google says it’s applying the spam detection algorithm from its main search results into Image Search.

Byline Dates

Google says it’s now showing “more accurate byline dates” after making some changes to how it determines what date to assign to a web document. There’s no extra detail provided — so I can only speculate that this is part of the change — but I just noticed last night on a search for “blog directories” that Google was showing two old blog posts but with their most recent “updated” dates:

Both of those are at least several years old, but show 2011 as the byline date.

Other Google Changes

There are several other changes mentioned in Google’s blog post:

• The company says it’s doing a better job of determining where web documents are from, so that its country-restricted search results are more accurate.
• Google says it’s improved what it calls “soft 404″ detection, which is when websites/servers are configured to send the wrong response code to Google’s spiders.
• There are two changes mentioned on the topic of related queries, including one that makes the algorithm “more conservative and less likely to introduce results without query words.”

You can see read Google’s blog post for the full list of 30 changes that were made in December.

We’ve received emails here at Search Engine Land HQ and seen tweets asking about the appearance of Sitelinks on sub-pages that previously didn’t have them. We’ve also seen them show up on our own Google searches, like one I recently did for “Quora logo.”

Sitelinks are also showing on searches like “danny sullivan twitter,” “elisabeth osmeloski twitter” and “matt mcgee twitter.”

It’s not new for Sitelinks to show up on sub-pages; that’s been happening for some time now. But based on the emails and tweets we’ve seen, some of our readers think they’re showing up on more sub-pages than before. A Google spokesperson tells us that this is “not new behavior,” but that Google does regularly tweak how many Sitelinks show up in search results.

It’s not new behavior. Sitelinks have never been restricted to top level domain pages – sitelinks will appear when our algorithms think a particular site is a highly relevant result for a query. We’re constantly experimenting and updating data that sitelinks use, so you may be seeing more, or less, sitelinks appear for pages.

So, if you’re thinking Google has expanded Sitelinks to more “deep” pages, Google says not so.

After much testing, Google finally posted official confirmation that these new large sitelinks are here to stay.

Google Expands Sitelinks:

Google said the Sitelinks will now be “full-size links with a URL and one line of snippet text.” The links and snippets will be very similar to the standard regular results, which Google says makes “it even easier to find the section of the site you want.” Plus, Google is upping the number of sitelinks from eight to twelve sitelinks for these queries.

Here is a picture:

Google Improves Sitelinks Algorithm

Google also said they have made “a significant improvement to our algorithms by combining sitelink ranking with regular result ranking to yield a higher-quality list of links.” Google said this “reduces link duplication and creates a better organized search results page.”

I personally see the changes now, but if you do not, you may see them in the next few days.

Related Stories:

• Google’s 12 Sitelink Experiment Returns
• Google Displaying Listing Numbers In Results Snippets
• Confirmed: Google Search Testing New “Clean” Design: For Tablets Only
• Google Warns Of Malware Redirecting To Its Search Results
• Official: The Google Wonder Wheel Is Gone
• Google Starts Showing Author Images In Search Results
• Google Testing New “Branded” Places Onebox

That’s an image posted yesterday by Seer Interactive, where their blog post has additional screenshots showing 12 sitelinks for queries such as “whitehouse” and “city of philadelphia.” Chris Barr also posted about this earlier today with a screenshot for the query “Taradel” (a printing company).

But the test actually dates back to at least April, when it was noticed on WebmasterWorld and discussed for about a week.

In all of the screenshots and examples that searchers have posted, the dozen sitelinks only show up on specific entity-related queries such as the exact company/organization/location name or its exact URL.

At the moment, I’m not able to trigger the experiment in either Firefox or Safari.

Postscript: See Official: Google Sitelinks Expands To 12 Pack.

For example, if I search for [twitter] on Google, I see Robert Scoble (scobleizer), Steve Rubel (steverubel), Israeli Consulate (israelconsulate) and Matt Cutts (mattcutts) in my Sitelinks. Here is a picture:

Google explained these social sitelinks come from their Google Social Search technology.

You can try this yourself for searching on [NHL] or your favorite team while the teams are on the ice.

You will notice real-time scores, schedules and team standings plus easy access to game previews, live streams, recaps and video highlights.

What is interesting is that these are not a one box result, instead they are enhanced search results. The result is much richer than a standard rich snippet result. Here is a picture of the NHL results on Google.