In September 2011 Google made some significant changes to their data feed requirements. MightyMerchant has made the appropriate updates to our feed templates, but if you manage your feed yourself it is important that you log-in to your Google Products account to be certain that your feed is running properly. MightyMerchant customers using our Managed Feed Service need take no action.

We recommend you check on your Google feed regularly. Going through these steps every month will help you stay on top of any feed import or data quality issues that may crop up.

Visit our documentation page explaining how to verify your Google Product Feed.

Have you noticed that your analytics for the past month look a little different?

In a move that is bound to make Internet privacy advocates cheer and SEO’s and website owners jeer, Google recently announced that when users are signed in to their Google account, the search service is taking them to the secure search page (https:www.google.com . . . note the extra ‘s’) by default. If you’re not logged in to your Google account you can navigate to the secure site directly if you choose to. This change encrypts users search queries—a useful and desirable feature when users are on a public WiFi network or hotspot, but it has significant implications for site owners using Google Analytics to track their site visitors.

In unsecure search, site owners not only know that a visitor came from Google, but they get individual data about each referral, for instance, whether the user came from another link or what specific search term they used. With secure search, site owners will know only that the user came from Google.

Paid search data will not be affected.

What is a victory for privacy means that website owners that want this information they used to have access to will now have to pay for it. While this change is estimated to affect only about 10% of a site’s traffic, that’s 10% less data that you will now have access to.

You can still use your Google Webmaster Tools account to see your top 1000 search terms each day for your site, but that data is just a sample, doesn’t show every single search term, and the numbers are rounded off.

As business owners, how do you feel about this change?

One of the mysterious things about search is that we know what we want when we search, but the computer doesn’t. Google’s entire kingdom has been built upon their efforts to break through this barrier to delivering users the information that they really want.

Google just announced an improvement to their algorithm that delivers fresh content when you want fresh content, and all content when the freshness might not matter so much. Let’s explain more. . .

Current events and news pop up on a daily, hourly, and minute-by-minute basis. If you search for a current event, you probably want the most recent information. Even something from a day or two ago might be too old to be useful.

If you search for information about a football game score, you might want the one from last week, but there’s an even better chance that you want scores for the game that ended earlier that day.

An event such as the Olympic takes place every 4 years, but if you search for Olympics today, you probably don’t want results from the last Olympics–there’s a good chance you’re interested in the one that is coming up next summer.

Google Search uses a “freshness algorithm” they call Caffeine that delivers the most up-to-date results, even when, like the Olympics example, you don’t specify Olympics 2012.

The results from Caffeine have now enabled Google to improve the ranking algorithm that they say impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you the most recent results that you probably want.

If you’re searching, for instance, for Occupy Wall Street info, you may get results that are only minutes old, rather than news reports from last week.

But there are lots of times when the most recent results don’t matter that much, for instance, when searching for a recipe or some other reference point. In those cases, the algorithm update now better “understands” what you want and delivers freshness to meet your needs.

While on the surface this seems like a great thing, SEOs and webmasters are concerned, and rightly so. This change may put even more influence on content that changes on a regular basis. If your site doesn’t update very often, you may want to keep an eye on how this affects your rankings. Let’s say you have helpful, informative articles on your site about your products. If they haven’t been updated since last year, Google may not pay much attention to them anymore in favor of articles about the same topic that have been updated more recently.

Also, for the user, the best search results are the ones that are relevant, not just fresh. If you have any doubts about how you should proceed with your site updates and optimization in light of this change, here’s our advice:

Relevancy will always be important. If you can make updates to your site’s content, review, articles, etc., do so. But don’t update haphazardly so that you’re updating with low-quality information just for the sake of updating. And, like most things search-related, keep an eye on things. There are opportunities for webmasters in any industry to provide fresh, relevant content.

Have you heard of Google’s new “+1″ button? It parallels the Facebook ‘Like’ button and strengthens Google’s grasp on social media and their attempts to deliver personal, customized, relevant search results.

There is a big difference between Facebook’s system of liking posts and Google’s button, and it has its own unique implications for SEO and blogs, Adwords users, and how you present your business to the masses. For SEO adopters and bloggers, the worry is that a site that isn’t getting “+1s” will be pushed down the search results in favor of sites that are more heavily “liked.” Users can also “+1″ AdWords ads, and although at this time Google says that they won’t use that against their advertisers, they are collecting a lot of information about what ads their users like which we can bet they will find some significant use for.

Check out “Google’s New +1 Button” article, which we just posted on HeroWeb.com, for the complete run down on how you can use this new development to your advantage, as well as these and other pitfalls to be aware of.

Just about a month ago, Google rolled out a new user interface for local search that is quite different from the previous method, both algorithmically and visually. These changes merge the local and organic results in a new way. If you’ve used Google at all since the change you’ve probably already gotten used to it.

This screen shot shows the new interface, and how the listings with a map presence (via Google Places) are favored.

As far as placement on the search results page, the changes to the search algorithm shouldn’t make much difference to website owners who have pursued long-term, best-practice SEO strategies that include optimizing for organic results, signing up for local search accounts, using social networking sites, and obtaining reviews. So if you have some strong incoming links, have some social networking profiles or a blog set up, and have done a good job of optimizing your site for local search terms, relax! The new interface shouldn’t impact you too much. Of course, any time the Big G makes a change to the way they conduct business it makes everybody nervous and it makes sense to evaluate if your listings have changed.

Google made a big splash when they first integrated Google Local into the main search results. The local results displaced businesses that didn’t appear on the map and pushed them further down the results page. It also seemed to favor those with a strong local presence to begin with, which hurt those sites for whom local optimization had not been a priority. The biggest change with this new rollout seems to be that sites with a strong Google Local (now called Google Places) presence and weaker on-site organic optimization seem to be hurt by this the most, getting pushed farther down the search results page. Businesses with a strong Google Places listing and good site optimization will really stick out the Google search page .

So what can you do? First of all, if you don’t already have one, create a free Google Places account today. Begin creating a local presence for yourself. If you already have a Google Places account or aren’t sure…check into it and make sure the listing is as complete as it can be. Essentially, focus on what has made sound organic search optimization strategy for the past several years, local search aside: title tags and matching on-page content, a local search presence, and strong incoming links. When you create your Google Places listing, make sure to work your top phrases into your business description and use the best categories to describe your business.

Google is putting a much greater emphasis on local search. We are sure to see more changes in the months ahead as they continue to make the Google platform more relevant and useful for local searchers.

Google Caffeine is Google’s latest greatest search technology. If you have not heard of Caffeine, it is a new technology that Google has developed to index websites. So if your livelihood depends on your site’s Google search rankings, then Caffeine is mega-important.

For the past several months Google has been testing Caffeine in their developer “sandbox.” They have now turned off the test environment and are satisfied that Caffeine is ready for prime time.

Google will start to roll out Caffeine in their many data centers. The roll-out will happen slowly and, according to Matt Cutts, one of Google’s prime communicators on all things Search, the bulk of the roll-out will happen after the holidays. That means, when you go to search at Google over the next few months it is possible that you will start seeing Caffeine-driven results.

But don’t expect to see something dramatically different. In fact, the results should be quite similar. You will not see differences in the interface of Google’s search page, but there are some key under-the-hood enhancements:

1. Faster delivery of new web content (hence, the name “Caffeine”). The speed bump should be realized in both the efficiency of Google pulling in data from a range of web and social sources and also in the speed with which the Google results page is displayed when a user does a search.

2. Theoretically, the results will be more relevant. Of course, relevancy is the goal of all search engines and has been the fundamental competency that Google has built their empire on. With competition from Bing, Google is continuing to push the envelope.

3. The load-time of web pages is going to become more of a factor. If pages load quickly Google will value them.

As with all of Google’s roll-outs, there is a certain level of secrecy about the underlying technology and algorithms. We recommend monitoring your organic search results closely over the next few months. We will be watching our sites closely for fluctuations in results.

Sources:

Google Webmaster Central Blog – http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Matt Cutts Blog – http://www.mattcutts.com/

We recently published a new article on understanding and maximizing local search, which is critical for the success of your business, whether you have a website or not.  Steps include registering your business and/or website on Google’s Local Business Center, Yahoo Local, and Bing’s Local Listing Center.  These 3 sites are becoming increasingly important as the search engines continue to make updates, and utilizing location in displaying search results.  They can recognize you IP address automatically and display local results.  The widespread growth of smart-phones means people will search for businesses on the go and nearest to them.

By now you shouldn’t have any excuse not to register your business through these main listing centers.  But if you haven’t done so yet, and want another reason to do so, this one is pretty cool.  Yesterday, Google announced improvements to their Street View feature used in Google Maps, which makes it easier to view Local Business Listings in Street View.  In the old version, when you search for a business on Google Maps and clicked on a result, a bubble would appear with more details.  One option would be to see the “Street View”.  All that would appear was the Street View image of that business, but without the bubble of information.  In the new version, it takes that bubble of information (the local business listing information), and displays it in Street View.  You can move around the street and still see the 3D marker and bring up the information whenever you want.

Google also shows in a video on their blog post that if someone finds a cafe in Street View, they can use the new feature to search for nearby pizza instead and easily learn the route to the nearest spot.  So you may not be a user’s initial search, but you could be the nearest place if they want what you have.  So be sure to keep your listings up-to-date and accurate.  Local listings are one of the easiest things an owner can do to increase business.

Yesterday Yahoo and Microsoft announced a major partnership between their respective search marketing departments.   This deal ended a long rumored courtship of Yahoo by Microsoft with several attempts of either partnership or out-right purchase by Microsoft.  In the simplest terms,

“Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.”

Bing will now power the core technologies behind Yahoo’s search engine, while Yahoo can continue to build upon Bing and control their own user experience.  The Bing engine itself will also be allowed to integrate Yahoo’s search technologies on it’s own site.  From the official press release, here are a few of the key terms:

• The term of the agreement is 10 years;
• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms;
• Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.
• Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.

There were many more details announced at the press conference including some of the basic financial terms, so we suggest checking out the rest of the press release.  But in regards to the actual search engines, what does this mean for the small business owner running an ecommerce site?  How will this effect the ability of users to find your site?

Small Business Implications

There is no reason to panic right now about where your website traffic will be coming from.  The deal will take at around 24 month to complete the full global transition of Yahoo! Powered by Bing.  It will start with federal approval, which should take about 3-6 months.  Reports are that once it’s all complete, Bing will have about a 28% share of the market.   It’s still a far cry from Google’s market share, but two heads are always better than one, and the partnership should keep Google on their feet and push further innovation.  But this move definitely signals the end of Yahoo in the search business.   At one time Yahoo search was even powered by Google, but that partnership ended in 2004.

For your website, optimizing for Bing will become very important.  We have talked before about some tips for using Bing effectively for ecommerce.  Registering your local listings, using Webmaster Central, and/or advertising through AdCenter will become even more important within the next year.  SEOmoz also has a great post today about the impact of this deal on SEO.

It was a pretty big announcement yesterday (even if it’s all about the #2 spot in the search industry) and we will certainly see much more details and news about “Bingahoo” over the course of the next months.  If you want even more information, there are certainly enough coverage to go around: TechCrunch, Mashable, and Marketing Pilgrim.

Recently, Microsoft unveiled their new search engine – Bing.com.  Actually, they prefer to call Bing a “decision engine.”  It’s designed to help visitors weed through all the search overload that other engines give you, and help you make real decisions about what your searching for.  They have designed Bing with three goals in mind, to “deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to faster, more confident decisions.”

Early indications show that most people are having positive experiences with Bing, and Microsoft is using an almost $100 million advertising campaign to promote it’s rebranded search engine as well.  So how can you, as an ecommerce professional, take advantage of this new source of visitors and potential sales?

First, test out Bing for yourself.  And don’t just do a one-time search for some random item like shoes or your name.  Instead, make it your default search engine for a while.  Get accustomed to some of the useful features like refined categories and related topics on the left-hand navigation plain.  Bing also does a great job with integrating shopping results and local retailers in your area.  The idea is to get used to how people will use it and hopefully find your website.

Next, make sure your website is listed using their Webmaster Central tools.  If you have a physical location for your business, get your information listed on their Local Listing Center.  And if you want even more exposure, directly upload your products for free with Product Upload.  Microsoft also has a pay-per-click program called adCenter, which they have also made improvements to.

Bing’s initial rise to #2 was probably from the hype and introduction, so only time will tell if they can sustain any growth.  They may not take down the all-powerful Google, but they could certainly lower it’s market share.  With a good redesign and early positive experiences, it looks like Microsoft has finally found a worthy competitor.

Google has been busy recently updating the ways it displays search results.  First they improved local search by matching your IP address with your search terms.  So now when you search for pizza, you’ll get all the results for pizza restaurants near your zip code.  Shortly after, Google added the option for mini-sitelinks to your website search results, even if your site doesn’t show up in the first position.

Yesterday, they made waves again by first expanding their Google  Search Options.  Now visitors will see a panel at the top called “Show Options”.  This will allow them to really customize what they are looking for and narrow down their search.  There are many different options that can be used together or in combination.

Google also announced two other new tools – Rich Snippets and Google Squared.  To learn more about these changes and other Google updates, visit the official Google Blog.