About three weeks ago, Microsoft was granted a new patent with the name Web Spam Classification Using Query Dependent Data. Although this patent application was filed by Microsoft, all major search engines probably use similar methods to classify web pages.
Last month, Google published an official statement about linking out to other websites. Some webmasters still think that linking to other websites might have a negative effect on their Google rankings. That is not the case.
Getting high rankings on Google is so important for the success of a website that some webmasters try anything to get on Google's first result page.
Unfortunately, many of the methods that promise high search engine rankings are basically spam. Google doesn't like spam at all and if Google finds out that your website contains spam elements, your website will be penalized.
Last week, Google added the 'Google Suggest' feature that had been available in beta for a long time. This might sound like a small change but it can have a big effect on the traffic that you get from Google.
Many webmasters don't get high rankings on Google and other search engines just because Google's indexing robot finds it difficul to index their web pages.
Search engine robots are very simple software programs. If an indexing robot cannot find the content of your website immediately, it will skip your site and go to the next link in the list. For that reason, it is very important to make sure that search engine robots can index your web pages without problems.
A month ago, Google announced that they had improved the way it indexes Flash files. Has something changed in Google's search results in the meantime? Is this change good news for you if you have a Flash site?
A new search engine with the name Cuil.com launched yesterday. Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge and it is pronounced "cool". Could Cuil be the new Google killer that so many companies tried to build?
This month, Yahoo was granted a patent that describes how link texts may be used to increase the relevancy ranking of a web page. Although the patent was filed in 2002, it provides interesting details about how search engines can use link texts.
Do you want to get customers from outside the United States? Is your business located in Europe or another part of the world? There are a few things to consider if your website is aimed at people outside the United States.
More and more websites get Sitelinks in Google's search results. What are they, how can they help your website and how can you influence which links Google will use for your Sitelinks? What can you do if Google displays the wrong links?