Google updation list 2012

Penguin—  1.1 May 25, 2012

Google rolled out its first targeted data update after the "Penguin" algorithm update. This confirmed that Penguin data was being processed outside of the main search index, much like Panda data.

Google Releases Penguin Update 1.1 (SEL)

Knowledge Graph — May 16, 2012

In a major step toward semantic search, Google started rolling out "Knowledge Graph", a SERP-integrated display providing supplemental object about certain people, places, and things. Expect to see "knowledge panels" appear on more and more SERPs over time. Also, Danny Sullivan's favorite Trek is ST:Voyager?!

Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings (Google)
Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links (SEL)

April 52-Pack — May 4, 2012

Google published details of 52 updates in April, including changes that were tied to the "Penguin" update. Other highlights included a 15% larger "base" index, improved pagination handling, and a number of updates to sitelinks.


Search quality highlights: 52 changes for April (Google)
Google’s April Updates: Bigger & Tiered Index, Document Ranking, Sitelink Changes & More (SEL)

Panda 3.6 — April 27, 2012

Barely a week after Panda 3.5, Google rolled out yet another Panda data update. The implications of this update were unclear, and it seemed that the impact was relatively small.


Confirmed: Panda Update 3.6 Happened On April 27th (SEL)

Penguin — April 24, 2012

After weeks of speculation about an "Over-optimization penalty", Google finally rolled out the "Webspam Update", which was soon after dubbed "Penguin." Penguin adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing, and impacted an estimated 3.1% of English queries.




Another step to reward high-quality sites (Google)
The Penguin Update: Google’s Webspam Algorithm Gets Official Name (SEL)
Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice (SEL)
Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO (SEL)

Panda 3.5 — April 19, 2012

In the middle of a busy week for the algortihm, Google quietly rolled out a Panda data update. A mix of changes made the impact difficult to measure, but this appears to have been a fairly routine update with minimal impact.


Google Mocks Me For Missing Panda 3.5 (SER)

Parked Domain Bug — April 16, 2012

After a number of webmasters reported ranking shuffles, Google confirmed that a data error had caused some domains to be mistakenly treated as parked domains (and thereby devalued). This was not an intentional algorithm change.


Dropped In Rankings? Google’s Mistake Over Parked Domains Might Be To Blame (SEL)


Updated: Google Update April 2012? Over SEO Penalty? (SER)

March 50-Pack — April 3, 2012

Google posted another batch of update highlights, covering 50 changes in March. These included confirmation of Panda 3.4, changes to anchor-text "scoring", updates to image search, and changes to how queries with local intent are interpreted.


Search quality highlights: 50 changes for March (Google)
Google’s March Updates: Anchor Text, Image Search, Navigational Search & More (SEL)

Panda 3.4 — March 23, 2012

Google announced another Panda update, this time via Twitter as the update was rolling out. Their public statements estimated that Panda 3.4 impacted about 1.6% of search results.


Google Says Panda 3.4 Is ‘Rolling Out Now’ (SEL)

Search Quality Video — March 12, 2012

This wasn't an algorithm update, but Google published a rare peek into a search quality meeting. For anyone interested in the algorithm, the video provides a lot of context to both Google's process and their priorities. It's also a chance to see Amit Singhal in action.


Video! The search quality meeting, uncut (Google)

Panda 3.3 — February 27, 2012

Google rolled out another post-"flux" Panda update, which appeared to be relatively minor. This came just 3 days after the 1-year anniversary of Panda, an unprecedented lifespan for a named update.

Google Confirms Panda 3.3 Update (SEL)
Confirmed: Google Panda 3.3 (SER)

February 40-Pack (2) — February 27, 2012

Google published a second set of "search quality highlights" at the end of the month, claiming more than 40 changes in February. Notable changes included multiple image-search updates, multiple freshness updates (including phasing out 2 old bits of the algorithm), and a Panda update.


Search quality highlights: 40 changes for February (Google)

Venice — February 27, 2012

As part of their monthly update, Google mentioned code-name "Venice". This local update appeared to more aggressively localize organic results and more tightly integrate local search data. The exact roll-out date was unclear.


Understand and Rock the Google Venice Update (SEOmoz)
Google Venice Update – New Ranking Opportunities for Local SEO (Catalyst eMarketing)

February 17-Pack — February 3, 2012

Google released another round of "search quality highlights" (17 in all). Many related to speed, freshness, and spell-checking, but one major announcement was tighter integration of Panda into the main search index.


17 search quality highlights: January (Google)
Google’s January Search Update: Panda In The Pipelines, Fresher Results, Date Detection & More (SEL)

Ads Above The Fold — January 19, 2012

Google updated their page layout algorithms to devalue sites with too much ad-space above the "fold". It was previously suspected that a similar factor was in play in Panda. The update had no official name, although it was referenced as "Top Heavy" by some SEOs.


Page layout algorithm improvement (Google)
Pages With Too Many Ads “Above The Fold” Now Penalized By Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm (SEL)

Panda 3.2 — January 18, 2012

Google confirmed a Panda data update, although suggested that the algorithm hadn't changed. It was unclear how this fit into the "Panda Flux" scheme of more frequent data updates.


Confirmed: Google Panda 3.2 Update (SEW)
Google Panda 3.2 Update Confirmed (SEL)

Search + Your World — January 10, 2012

Google announced a radical shift in personalization - aggressively pushing Google+ social data and user profiles into SERPs. Google also added a new, prominent toggle button to shut off personalization.


Source : http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change

Google Penguin

Google Penguin is a code name for a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April 24, 2012. The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using black-hat SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, participating in link schemes, deliberate creation of duplicate content, and others.

Naming the algorithm update

Penguin update went live on April 24, 2012. However, Google had not come up with an official name for it until two days later. Search Engine Land, a popular online magazine that covers search news, asked their readers to provide suggestions on how to name the new algorithm change on Google+ and Facebook.Among the popular suggestion were "Pi", "OOPs", "Shark Update" and "Titanic" (the absolute leader).

Penguin’s effect on Google search results

By Google’s estimates, Penguin affects approximately 3.1% of search queries in English, about 3% of queries in languages like German, Chinese, and Arabic, and an even bigger percentage of them in "highly-spammed" languages. On May 25th, 2012, Google unveiled the latest Penguin update, called Penguin 1.1, this Penguin update, according to Matt Cutts, is supposed to impact less than one-tenth of a percent of English searches.

The differences between Penguin and previous updates

Before Penguin, Google released a series of algorithm updates called Panda that first appeared in February 2011. Panda aimed at downranking websites that provided poor user experience. To identify such websites, a machine-learning algorithm by Navneet Panda was used, hence the name. The algorithm follows the logic by which Google’s human quality raters determine a website’s quality. In January 2012, so-called page layout algorithm update was released, which targeted websites with little content above the fold. The strategic goal that Panda, Penguin and page layout update share is to display higher quality websites at the top of Google’s search results. However, sites that got downranked as the result of these updates have different sets of characteristics.The main target of Google Penguin update is to check webspam.

Google’s Penguin feedback form

Two days after Penguin update was released, Google prepared a feedback form, designed for two categories of users: those who want to report web spam that still ranks highly after the search algorithm change, and those who think that their site got unfairly hit by the update. Google also has a reconsideration form through Google Webmaster Tools for the 700,000 sites who received an email stating their sites demonstrated unusual linking.

Google does not offer any support out side the forms and there have been no instances that Google is following up with those submitting the forms.

Google Penguin Update: How You Can Survive?

Webmasters and Bloggers have not even finished wiping their tears because of the recent Google Panda effect, I guess now it is time for them to buy two hand kerchiefs. Google has introduced another new update for so-called better search results and they named it as “Penguin”. I guess only Google can make me hate/love these animals without knowing much about them. Google Penguin update targeted at webspam.

They have clearly mentioned that the change will decrease rankings for sites that violates Google’s existing quality guidelines. We have elaborated some existing guidelines and other essentials tips to survive Google Penguin update. You can see them below and if you have any issues, feel free to comment using the comment form below the article.

1. Avoid Hidden Text or Hidden Links on your Blog

Ok, to make it more simple, if you present text, link or any information to search engines differently than to visitors, then they are called as Hidden Text or Hidden Link. That is a bad practice and your site could be easily penalized for that. Normally people use CSS to make them as small as possible. Some even make the font size smaller directly.

Things You Should Avoid:

* Using white text on a white background.

* Including text behind an image

* Using CSS to hide text

* Setting the font size to 0

2. Use Good Keyword Density On Your Blog Posts

If you want to write SEO Rich Posts then you need to concentrate on your Keyword Density. If it is not proper then you’ll end up messing your entire blog post.

What is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is a measure of how often a keyword or keyword phrase is used in your web page. Also Google uses this to determine how relevant your web site is in a search. The standard keyword density will help your website to achieve higher search engine positions. You can use Google Toolbar to analyze Keyword Density. Normally you should have 3% to 4% Keyword Density, but try to make it around 2% for better results.

3. Avoid Keyword Stuffing/Cloaking/Spamming

Keyword Stuffing is another unethical SEO practice done by some webmasters using keywords. They use more than enough keywords inside the post to get more exposure in search engines, but actually they won’t. Search engines like Google can easily identify such practices and thus resulting in penalization. Even you might have accidentally used more keywords inside your blog post, so it is better to proofread them before publishing.

You can refer the above tip (#2) about Keyword Density, maintain that to keep your post clean. Also don’t use irrelevant keywords inside your post. The keywords you mention should be related to your blog post in one way or another.

4. Don’t send automated queries to Google

You should not send automated queries to any search engine. People normally use some sort of software to automate such queries thinking that it will result in Good SEO.

Taken from Google Webmaster Tools [Content Guidelines]

Google’s Terms of Service do not allow the sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express permission in advance from Google. Sending automated queries absorbs resources and includes using any software (such as WebPosition Gold™) to send automated queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks in Google search results for various queries.

You should not make your blog work with unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, analyze, etc.

5. Avoid Duplicate Content: Multiple pages, Subdomains, or domains

If you want to prevent your blog from becoming a scrapper site then you should avoid duplicate content.

What Could Also Be Duplicate Content

* Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices.

* Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs.

* Printer-only versions of web pages

To avoid these issues you can indicate your preferred URL to Google by Canonicalization. You can also minimize similar content and use 301 redirects to avoid this issue. Also don’t forget to tell Google (via Webmaster Tools) how you want your site to be indexed, like http://www.hellboundbloggers.com or http://hellboundbloggers.com (example).

Also if you are accepting guest posts then check whether they are genuine or copied posts.

6. Don’t create Pages with Malicious Behavior

Malicious Behavior in the sense, it could include phishing or installing viruses (check Symptoms of Virus), trojans, or other badware which potentially harms search engines and your visitor’s computer. Google hates it and penalizes it without further action.

Suppose if you have a page with pop ups and scripts that could install any harmful software with or without permission into your visitor’s computer, then that could be a bad strategy and you should delete those pages before Google does something to your site.

7. Don’t Use Doorway Pages To Impress Search Engines

Some webmasters create poor quality pages for targeting specific keyword or phrase. They are often called as “Doorway Pages”. Normally such pages frustrate users and also funnels them to a single destination using cloaking or some other black hat SEO techniques. It violates Webmaster Guidelines.

Doorway pages normally have Auto-generated content or scrapped content and are not essential for any kind of users.

Doorway pages are web pages that are created for spamdexing, this is, for spamming the index of a search engine by inserting results for particular phrases with the purpose of sending visitors to a different page. They are also known as bridge pages, portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names. Doorway pages that redirect visitors without their knowledge use some form of cloaking.

8. Avoid Affiliate Marketing Until You Have Good Content

They also want your site to have good and original content if you want to participate in Affiliate Marketing. Your blog should not have scrap content and also auto-generated content (which auto blogs normally does).

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

Your site should have enough promising content for your readers to consider the Affiliate products from your site. If your site is not yet for Affiliate Marketing or your site has no valuable readers, then you can quit it and try some other SEO strategies for making money with your blog.

9. Avoid Black Hat Link Building Techniques

This Google Penguin update is mostly targeted at Webspam, so that they can reward high quality websites. So I guess they’ll be penalizing links and sites which affects or differs from the context of the main page. So before you build links for your blog, check the quality of the link partners.

Earlier Google penalized blog networks and gave a penalty to non-contextual backlinks, so you need to be very careful about link building. Don’t forget your Article Linking Strategy should not distract readers. Penguin will affect your Backlinking Strategy if you are not playing it well.

You should also consider Organic Link Building, it will help you get wider search engine exposure and drive targeted traffic to your business. An organic link is a link from someone else’s site with or without an explicit agreement to exchange links.

10. Avoid Buying/Using Cheap SEO Services

Bad and Cheap SEO services normally give you black hat search engine optimization for your site which is against Google’s Policy for better results. They will have poor link building services and it will result in excess backlinks.

Usually they’ll have packages which includes excess do-follow links, Wikipedia links, .edu backlinks, etc for less price. But the results are not worth it. To be frank, you don’t need to rely on such SEO services if you can manage some time and apply basic SEO tips. If you end up with bad SEO Mistakes then it is hard to recover.

Difference between Google Panda updates and Penguin updates

Since Google rolled out the Penguin updates on April 24th, lot of people started asking what is Panda updates and Penguin updates. In this article, I will compare the Panda updates and Penguin updates from Google search.

If you are not familiar with the names I am referring to, here is a brief idea. Both Google Panda updates and Google Penguin updates refer to algorithm changes at the Google Web Search system. These are series of changes made to the way how Google rank websites and show them in search results.

Difference between Google Panda updates and Penguin updates


There are quite a few differences between the Panda updates and Penguin updates, but they both are meant to cleanup the Google search results.



The primary difference between Panda updates and Penguin updates is, Panda update were meant to penalize low quality websites and Penguin updates are meant to promote high quality sites while penalizing spammy sites.

If you closely compare the Panda updates and Penguin updates, you will see that both are meant to cleanup the search results and nothing else. Even though Panda deal with low quality sites and Penguin deals with spammy sites, both are essentially same in most cases. Typically, spammy sites have low quality content or thin content. But they use keyword stuffing and cloaking to cheat Google. Both Panda and Penguin penalize the sites that are involved in unethical SEO practices like spammy link building, excessive link exchange etc.

When the Penguin updates were rolled out on 24 April, Google mentioned few cases:

1. Sites that list hundreds of phone numbers with the intention of getting traffic for any of the phone numbers listed in the page.

2. Sites that use spinned articles and auto generated content with almost no value addition.

The Penguin updates specifically penalize such sites and reduce their search engine ranking.

Even though Penguin updates are targeted to penalize only sites that are involved in web spam, the webmaster forums are flooded with complaints about incorrect judgement of sites by this update. Many webmasters and bloggers report that the new updates have penalized genuine and original content while many spam websites still rank high in search results.


History of Panda updates and Penguin updates

Panda Updates where first rolled out on Feb 23, 2011. After that, a series of updates were announced by Google and the last one was Panda 3.5, rolled out in April 2012. Each of the Panda updates affected about 3% of the search queries and hundreds of blogs and low quality websites where kicked out of Google search results.

Google Penguin updates came up as a surprise to most webmasters when it was announced on 24 April 2012. In fact, Google did not declare a name for the updates when the official announcement of Penguin updates were made. Later, after seeing a lot of complaints in the webmaster forums and blogs, Google decided to open a Feedback Form and mentioned the name "Penguin updates" in their twitter posts.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization (both on-page and off-page) as well as through advertising (paid placements, contextual advertising, and paid inclusions). Depending on the context, SEM can be an umbrella term for various means of marketing a website including search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages, or it may contrast with SEO, focusing on only paid components.

Market

In 2008, North American advertisers spent US$13.5 billion on search engine marketing. The largest SEM vendors were Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.[1] As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[3] Because of the complex technology, a secondary "search marketing agency" market has evolved. Some marketers have difficulty understanding the intricacies of search engine marketing and choose to rely on third party agencies to manage their search marketing.

History

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[4] in 1996 and then Goto.com[5] in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name[6] to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers[7] for search engines. In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an alliance. The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and Europe in February 2010.

Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term "Search Engine Marketing" was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001[9] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

SEM methods and metrics

There are four categories of methods and metrics used to optimize websites through search engine marketing.

1. Keyword research and analysis involves three "steps:" ensuring the site can be indexed in the search engines, finding the most relevant and popular keywords for the site and its products, and using those keywords on the site in a way that will generate and convert traffic.

2. Website saturation and popularity, how much presence a website has on search engines, can be analyzed through the number of pages of the site that are indexed on search engines (saturation) and how many backlinks the site has (popularity). It requires your pages containing those keywords people are looking for and ensure that they rank high enough in search engine rankings. Most search engines include some form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms. The followings are major tools measuring various aspects of saturation and link popularity: Link Popularity, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Marketleap's Link Popularity and Search Engine Saturation.

3. Back end tools, including Web analytic tools and HTML validators, provide data on a website and its visitors and allow the success of a website to be measured. They range from simple traffic counters to tools that work with log files[10] and to more sophisticated tools that are based on page tagging (putting JavaScript or an image on a page to track actions). These tools can deliver conversion-related information. There are three major tools used by EBSCO: (a) log file analyzing tool: WebTrends by NetiQ; (b) tag-based analytic programs WebSideStory's Hitbox; (c) transaction-based tool: TeaLeaf RealiTea. Validators check the invisible parts of websites, highlighting potential problems and many usability issues ensure your website meets W3C code standards. Try to use more than one HTML validator or spider simulator because each tests, highlights, and reports on slightly different aspects of your website.

4. Whois tools reveal the owners of various websites, and can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues.

Internet marketing





Internet marketing, also known as web marketing, online marketing, webvertising, or e-marketing, is referred to as the marketing (generally promotion) of products or services over the Internet. Internet marketing is considered to be broad in scope[citation needed] because it not only refers to marketing on the Internet, but also includes marketing done via e-mail and wireless media. Digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems are also often grouped together under internet marketing.[1]

Internet marketing ties together the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising and sales.[2] Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along many different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, email marketing, mobile advertising, and Web 2.0 strategies.

Types of Internet marketing

Internet marketing is broadly divided into the following types:

1.    Display advertising: the use of web banners or banner ads placed on a third-party website or blog to drive traffic to a company's own website and increase product awareness.

2.    Search engine marketing (SEM): a form of marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of either paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion, or through the use of free search engine optimization techniques.

3.    Search engine optimization (SEO): the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

4.    Social media marketing: the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

5.    Email marketing: involves directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using electronic mail.

6.    Referral marketing: a method of promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually word of mouth.

7.    Affiliate marketing: a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.

8.    Inbound marketing: involves creating and freely sharing informative content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers.

9.     Video marketing: This type of marketing specializes in creating videos that engage the viewer into a buying state by presenting information in video form and guiding them to a product or service.

Internet marketing

    * Search engine optimization
    * Social media marketing
    * Email marketing
    * Referral marketing
    * Content marketing

Search engine marketing
          * Pay per click
    * Cost per impression
    * Search analytics
    * Web analytics

Display advertising
          * Contextual advertising
    * Behavioral targeting

Affiliate marketing
         * Cost per action
    * Revenue sharing