It's the first Friday of the month, and that seems to be when Google has decided to push out its monthly update of search tweaks from the prior month. The January update is out and it contains a few interesting nuggets. Panda In The Pipelines There's a mention of the Panda algorithm update that we wrote about last week, but it also includes a somewhat cryptic reference to being more integrated into Google's "pipelines." We improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines. Sounds like Panda is baked into things even mor [...]

Related Topics: Google: News | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Top News

After 17 straight months of gains in market share, Google's Chrome web browser dropped 0.17 percent in January, and the company that tracks browser market share suggests that it's because Google penalized Chrome after a botched sponsored blog post campaign. The figures come from Net Applications, which says it tracks about 160 million unique visits per month to a worldwide network of more than 40,000 sites. According to Net Applications, Firefox and Safari also saw market share losses in January. While they were declining, Microsoft's Internet Explorer gained 1.09%, its biggest monthly g [...]

Related Topics: Featured | Google: Chrome | Google: SEO | SEO: Spamming | Stats: Popularity | Top News

"Why can't you just give me a straight answer?" Johanna's voice showed a trace of irritation.  "All I'm asking is how much you charge for SEO services!" I smiled. This was familiar terrain. As an SEO consultant, almost every client asks me a similar question. My answer is always the same. "It depends. On many things. Because SEO is not a turn-key solution you plug in to play." "Wait.  You're an expert - and you can't tell me what you'll charge?!" That's when I explain why and when SEO matters, and the dynamic process of fixing my price for SEO consulting. Broadly speaking [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Featured | Google: SEO

Matt Cutts, international diplomat? That might be the more appropriate title for Google's chief spam cop. According to the Wall Street Journal, Cutts is in South Korea this week and, in a presentation Monday night for about 80 government officials, webmasters, lawyers and journalists, managed to singlehandedly convince some government reps to let Googlebot crawl and index their websites. One of those in the audience was Kang Min-koo, a senior judge in the Seoul High Court. When he saw the court's Web site was on Mr. Cutts' list of government sites that couldn't be indexed by Google – and [...]

Related Topics: Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Google: SEO | Top News

Most multinational sites will serve content via a Content Delivery Network (CDN). But not all CDNs are equal: what should you look for to get the best bang for your buck in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) across the globe? Since Google's Caffeine update to its server infrastructure back in June 2010, Google has stepped up the importance of page load speed to its core algorithm. But page load speed has always been important to Google in providing a good searcher experience for Google searches. And this is a logical stance if you take a second to think it through. After all, if you [...]

Related Topics: Google: SEO | Multinational Search | SEO - Search Engine Optimization | SEO: General | SEO: Host Crowding & Clustering