This Guest Post by Kira Permunian is a Part of Guest Blogging Contest, for complete details please check Guest Blogging Contest page

Have you heard about the recent Google algorithm update?

It was just recently when I’ve heard this rumor again from my SEO Buddies talking about the new Google Search Algorithms – the thing that I am keen enough to know about. I explore over Google Search and on Google Blogs to see if there is really an official statement from Google with this thing. Fortunately, I found some related contents but not expressly tackling about the new algorithm.

But today, two emails dropped in my inbox confirming the rumors about the new Google Search Algorithms. Without trepidation, I accept the facts as true since the senders were of reliable source.

So here it is, the Google Search Algorithms. The first one has been long thought before but just implemented recently. The second one is the Googles Focus on Local Search Results.

CONTEXTUAL LINKS

Especially it has to do with links and your content. It shocks me that it took Google this long to implement this change, but the fix is easy. Get contextual links.

Some search engine experts are saying that Google is now placing more “weight” on links found within the actual content of our sites/blogs (called contextual links) rather than links found in the navigation menu, footer, sidebar, etc.

What does this mean to us?

If you use content/articles to promote something on the web, get back links and traffic then NOW is the time to step it up and create MORE content or get back links in the content. Well, if you are relying heavily on paid links, blog comments, forum profiles, etc. you may have seen your rankings drop.

What we need to do?

Getting back links from high Page Rank and popular related content is the best way to get more profits because contextual linking is the practice of integrating links to the most significant pages within your website or on the other related websites. When linking within content to an important page, make sure that any links placed on the page are contextually relevant and have contain keyword-focused anchor text.

Article submission is also one of the best ways of this development. You can easily submit an article of 300 to 500 words. But to be on the safer side you need to insure that your site is set up on an exclusive IP. This method is easy and popular but it should be done very safely and properly.

LOCAL SEARCH RESULTS

Another change in Google Search algorithm is that Google now focuses on listing results that are local/regional and have office address and phone number through Google’s Local Business listing service at the top of their search results.

They made it easier for us to find local stores that sell the stuffs we are looking by adding information about product availability to the SERPs. This must be a strategy to focus on regional information that is more appropriate and helpful to users.

How to optimize for Googles Local Search?

To optimize for local search in Google, you should update first your online local business listings or if not yet engaged in any local listings then this gonna be the time to be listed in some interactive yellow pages.

The method requires that you first maintain your local business listing, followed by your initial update, and then you have to consider constant monitoring and managing the local business listing just like your website.

The listings will serves as the best support tool to your primary website to rank in local search. In order for you to show up in the search results you have to be sure the local business listing has all the right information about your business, services, and products.

To name a few websites asides from Bing, Yahoo and Google local listings: Local.com, Yelp.com, Merchant Circle, Citysearch and many others sites, search engines, social networks, 411 websites, GPS websites, and some business directories.

These changes were part of vast changes that Google undergone this year like the Google Instant, Speed Matters, etc. Luckily all have been for good reasons and may provide better search experience.

If you want to add something on this article, just drop a comment! Thank you!

Related osts:

• Google Webmaster Tool: Google Started Showing more data, chart around top search terms

Have you heard about websites that are able to predict your future Page rank? Yes, there are some websites where you can check your future page rank prediction. I recently went through this website where we can check our present and future page ranks. And if you believe in such websites, SFM will be getting a huge boost in its PR in the next page rank update from Google.

According to this website, SFM current PR is 2/10 and it is showing SFM future page rank as 5.52/10. So I can expect a page rank of 5 for ScopeForMoney blog in the next PR Update from Google.

I even tried using this website to check some of other popular blogs in our industry. Here is current and Future Page Rank for some of leading blogs in our industry according to the data provided by this website:

Website Current PR Future PR

http://www.scopeformoney.com 2/10 5.52/10
http://www.smartbloggerz.com/ 4/10 5.52/10
http://www.myblog2day.com/ 3/10 5.46/10
http://www.eblogtip.com/ 3/10 5.06/10
http://dailyseotip.com/ 4/10 5.19/10
http://www.smashingshare.com/ 4/10 5.5/10
http://www.technogati.com/ 3/10 5.23/10

After seeing these websites future and current page ranks, I came to the conclusion that, SFM blog will have much higher PR compared with these websites in the next PR Update even through their current page rank’s are higher than SFM.

Have you tried using this website to check what will be your future page rank, pleas share in the comments section and if yes, what is your current and future PR shown by this website.

Note: I personally do not believe in such websites. If you want to know your actual PR, you should wait for the next page rank update to commence.

Related posts:

1. Google Page Rank update is going on
2. Google Page Rank for Scopeformoney.com blog
3. Google finally started updating its Pagerank

There is good news for webmasters and bloggers who use Google webmaster tool to keep track of top search terms for their websites and blogs. Now they have access to more statistics around top search queries for their website with charts. For all top search terms, impressions, clickthrough and % clickthrough statistics are available.

What these terms used here for:

Impressions total number of impressions for that keyword during the selected period for your website

Clickthrough gives the total number of clicks on your website for that keyword in a selected period of time

% Clickthrough gives the total percentage of clicks that your website gets out of total impressions. Suppose for make money online keyword, my website gets 5,400 impressions in the last one month and get 140 clicks, so my blog clickthrough rate for make money online keyword is 3 percent (approx).

For each keyword, we will have impressions, clickthrough and clickthrough rate as per our website positions on Google with respective URLs. This data is really useful to make estimates about the kind of traffic we can get for a keyword according to our website position in search engine results. From these statistics, I came to a conclusion, most of the time; 70-80 percent of traffic for a keyword is controlled by top 3 listing in the absence of paid results.

So if your website is placed on 9 or 10 position for a keyword and getting 5-10 clicks per day only, this count can increase 10s of time or even more if you are able to bring your website in top 3 listings.

Before this update from Google, we have access to top 100 search queries only. But now we have access to 1000s of search queries.

Related posts:

1. Google webmaster tool benefits for webmasters
2. Ultimate Keyword Research Ranking tool from KeyRow
3. Google adwords Keywords suggestion Tool

I was trying to contact Alan Leiw today, the owner of moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com blog, regarding some guest blogging issues. Then I think of browsing his blog, just after sending an email to him. But what I see, his blog is no more, its gone, and looks like Google deleted it. Dont know why Google is doing this with such a popular blog in money making niche. This blog used to enjoy top rankings on Google for most of highly searched keywords related to money making niche like make money, making money, make money online, earn money online etc. It was a PR 5 blog having Alexa ranking of 25,306.

Here is a screenshot of this blog showing in Google cache few hours back today (21 Apr 2010) even:

And here is another screenshot of makemoneyinfo blog showing “The blog you were looking for was not found” today:

Google is still showing sitelinks for this domain when I type in moneymakerinfo on google.com. So I’m unable to understand the reason behind deletion of this blog on whom Google shows lots of trust and authority for years. Here is a screenshot showing sitelinks shown by Google for this money making blog by Alan Leiw

Even I send an email to Alan about this hinting him about the situation. But I haven’t got any reply from him on it. Due to all these reasons, I always recommend using your own domain, instead of creating a free blog on Blogger. Otherwise, you have to pay the cost as Alan is paying by losing his blog for no reason. So all of his efforts that he invested for years in creating this blog and all of his earnings coming from this blog are gone.

For me it will be a big loss if Google does not restore this blog. In that case, I will be losing lots of valuable links and traffic coming from this blog. I had blogroll links exchange with Alan blog and had so far get 7-8 of my guest post published on this make money online blog.

What you have so say on it? Frankly speaking, I learnt a lot about making money and blogging related topics from this blog and this blog was covering highest amount of content related to money making niche. So I’m really sad after see what happens with this amazing make money blog. Have you ever been to this blog and how was your impression about this blog and how are you feeling after seeing this Blog not found?

Update

Alan Leiw confirmed Blogger Team deleted his moneymakerinfo blog created on Blogger (Owned by Google) on 21st April 2010

Good News

Good news is that MoneyMakerInfo blog is back on 28th April, 2010. So I’m really happy after seeing this huge money making blog being restored by Google. I sent an email to Alan asking:

Great to see you back. How you are able to get your blog back?

Here is how Alan replied to me:

I contacted the Blogger team and re-enable my Blogger account and then I send a request to them to review my blog and restore. They somehow restore my blog.

Related posts:

1. How to make money online with Blogger (Google) blog
2. How to make money online with Google Adsense Publisher program
3. How to use Google Trends to make money online

GOOGLE INC. (NASDAQ:GOOG) will begin making announcements about its financial performance solely through its investor relations website, making it the most prominent company to take advantage of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions (SECs) guidance on using company websites for disclosure under Regulation FD.

Almost all North American public companies currently distribute their earnings announcements and other investor disclosures through paid PR wire services that syndicate full-text releases to hundreds of media and Internet outlets. They do so even though the SEC ruled in August 2008 that postings on company websites alone can meet its fair disclosure requirements if they abide by certain standards.

Google broke with the PR wire service distribution tradition for its April 15 earnings release when it issued a short advisory via a paid PR wire service informing investors to visit the companys investor relations website to obtain the full earnings announcement. The advisory release approach, which we first recommended in 2007, has been adopted by at least two three other U.S. companies, BGC Partners (NASDAQ:BGCP), Reis, Inc. (Nasdaq:REIS), and Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE), which plans to use the process again April 29.

Googles IR website has long been recognized channel

However, Google also announced in its advisory release that it intends to make future announcements regarding its financial performance exclusively through its investor relations website. This suggests the company will no longer issue advisory releases and instead rely solely on its recently revamped investor relations website as a disclosure channel.

Google issued this advisory release informing investors to visit its IR website for the full earnings announcement

In its 2008 guidance on the use of corporate websites for disclosure, the SEC made it clear that companies could only use their websites for disclosure if their websites were a recognized channel for investors. It also provided a list of non-exclusive factors for companies to consider when evaluating whether their websites and their investors were ready for web-based disclosure.

I have long believed that Googles investor relations website is the recognized channel for its investors. This is because for the past several quarters online commentary about the companys results on news websites and blogs has almost always included links to the earnings information on Googles investor relations website rather than to news releases posted on wire service partner websites.

Links to a page are the primary measure of authority on the Internet. In fact, Google uses links to a web page in its search algorithm to determine which pages should be most prominent in its search results.

Companies that continue to use full-text PR wire releases for their investor announcements are in effect hampering their ability to claim recognized channel status for their own websites.

Real-time news distribution now free and open source

It is also relevant that Google enables investors to receive information direct from the company via email alerts and several RSS feeds. Importantly, one of the web feeds pushes out real-time updates to subscribers who use feed readers that support the open source Pubsubhubbub protocol developed by two Google engineers.

Unlike normal web feeds, which require subscribers to check the feed for updates at regular intervals typically hourly Pubsubhubbub-enabled feeds tell subscribers when new information is available and information can be distributed within seconds of it becoming available.

This typically results in information being distributed faster and more evenly than via paid PR wire services, which typically have delays of 1 to 7 minutes depending on how investors access the wire service.

Any web feed publisher can use Pubsubhubbub at no cost. IR Web Report has been using the protocol for several months and support for the protocol continues to grow across major web publishing companies and services.

Media and blogs shrug off the move

After Google issued its advisory release and made its announcement about using its website exclusively for future disclosures, I made a special effort to find any negative commentary about the move in news media and blog coverage of the results. No one commented on the change, but several did remark on the fact that Googles CEO Eric Schmidt was no longer attending the earnings calls.

This tells me that the move to website-only disclosure is a non-issue for the media, analysts and the investing public. However, that does not mean there will not be criticism of Google from some quarters.

Reuters journalists have in the past been critics of web-based disclosure. Parent Thomson Reuters owns the Hugin PR wire service in Europe and plans to bring the service to North America this year.

Meanwhile, Berkshire Hathaway-owned Business Wire has told companies that it will not distribute their advisory releases. Google was a Business Wire client, but switched to Market Wire immediately prior to issuing its April 15 advisory release.

Update April 16: As I predicted, Reuters again chimed in with an article headlined “Google’s unorthodox press release raises questions.” The article is poorly researched and contains errors such as saying that the SEC requires “notice-and-access” releases, which it does not. The article also failed to mention that Thomson Reuters owns Hugin and therefore is conflicted in its views on companies using their websites rather than paid PR wires.