Google Basics

Simply stated, Google is the standout leader in search today. It has the most traffic and the most new trends, and it's the only search engine with its own entry in the dictionary. Once a search-only entity, Google now offers e-mail, maps, feed readers, calendar, web analytics, and webmaster tools, not to mention a diverse menu of specialty search options, including news, video, image, blog, and local.

Google has been an all-out trendsetter in the evolution of the search space. Link popularity? Google made it hugely important. Integration of specialty search results within standard results?

Thank Google. A website's age being a factor in its ranking? Blame Google. We'll go into the details throughout the article, but let's face it: The world of SEO is playing Follow the Leader, and Google's at the head of the line. Google Analytics, the free and robust website traffic analysis tool, has been widely adopted since its launch in 2005. This was arguably the single most important development in SEO in recent years, because it gave the world's website owners the ability to easily measure conversions. This has precipitated a shift in the collective SEO mind-set to valuing conversions, not ranks, as the most important metric.

The current hot topics around Google are its mission expansions: From TV to voicemail to the supermarket aisles, the big G is everywhere. Ambitious lately? Staying on top of the long, and ever-lengthening, list of services Google offers can be overwhelming for a website owner. But you don't need to, as long as you focus on the services your target audience cares about. Most people are still using Google at its most basic level, typing a phrase in the search box, and seeing what results come up.

Google's current relationship with SEOs and webmasters has its points of light along with some black holes. SEOs appreciate the monitoring and management options available through the Webmaster Tools service and outreach by corporate representatives via blogs, forums, and conferences, but many SEOs kvetch about Google becoming too powerful. One topic that really brings out the bristle is Google's announcement in 2007 that paid links (inbound links that are purchased in an attempt to improve search engine ranks) should be reported to Google, presumably so that Google can mete out negative consequences. Besides feeling that the web community shouldn't become snitches, many people consider this preferential (“Why aren't Yahoo! Directory links considered paid links?�) or illogical (“Isn't there payment of some sort labor or money or favors involved in all web marketing efforts?�).

Even as you gobble up the free tools, services, and advice from Google, remember that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Google is a for-profit company, and an incredibly powerful one at that. Google will look after Google and, in doing so, may make policy changes that can create seismic shifts in website owners' lives. It's always best to create your site for your users, not for what you think will cause Google to rank you higher this week.

PageRank, ShmageRank

Google's PageRank is a measurement of a page's worth based on the quantity and quality of both incoming and outgoing links.The concept behind PageRank is that each link to a page constitutes a vote, and Google has a sophisticated and automated way of tallying these votes, which includes looking at a vast universe of interlinking pages. Google awards PageRank on a scale of 0 to 10; a PageRank value of 10 is the most desirable and extremely rare. Like the Richter scale, the Page- Rank scale is not linear, so the difference between 4 and 5 is much greater than the difference between 3 and 4.

More often than not, pages with high PageRank have higher Google rankings than pages with low PageRank. And therein lies the link obsession.Throughout the SEO community, the scrambling for, trading, and even selling of links became such a focus over the past several years that Google modified its system and began to devalue certain kinds of links. It's widely accepted, for example, that links from content-deficient “link farm�websites do not improve a page's PageRank, and getting a link from a page with high PageRank but irrelevant content (say, a popular comic book site that links to a forklift specifications page) won't either. Google now displays updated PageRank values at infrequent intervals to discourage constant monitoring. It's good to get links to your site, but obsessive link building to the point of excluding other areas of SEO is a waste of time. Keep a holistic head on your shoulders and remember these points:

- Google's ranking algorithm is not based entirely on inbound links.

- A high PageRank does not guarantee a high Google rank.

- A PageRank value viewed today may be months old.

PageRank is still a fairly good indication of how Google regards your website's pages, and you'll learn how to gather your own measurements in Your SEO Plan. But in the Right Now of SEO, think of PageRank as a hobby, not a religion.

The Best of the Rest: Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, AOL

Taken as a group, the major non-Google search engines that we're about to discuss make up about 40 percent of the search engine market, which means they deserve your attention. Non-Google search engines allow you to fill out your website's presence so that it is not overly dependent on rankings on a single site (what was that expression, something about eggs… and a basket?). Now, we'll fill you in on what you need to know about the search engines other than Google:

- Yahoo!

- MSN/Live Search

- Ask

- AOL

Yahoo!

Yahoo! (yes, the exclamation point is part of its name a bane to copy editors everywhere) is one of the oldest and still one of the best-known search engines. Already an established directory when Google was still in diapers, Yahoo! has now settled into the #2 spot. Nevertheless, with its considerable legacy and the muscle to expand its offerings through corporate purchases (acquisitions of the popular photo-sharing site Flickr, e-mail and collaboration tool Zimbra, and news site BuzzTracker show a continuing interest in the new and hip), Yahoo! is a force to be reckoned with.

While Yahoo! is gradually losing market share in comparison to Google, its absolute search traffic numbers are still holding steady, with roughly 2 billion searches in the second half of 2007. Yahoo! has generated many headlines with its mercurial existence of late: A burst of acquisitions, innovation, leadership changes, and potential buyouts keeps industry watchers bracing for a big search earthquake, and wondering how the landscape will look when it's over.

Nobody knows what the future will hold, but we do know this: Yahoo!'s healthy share of traffic and untapped potential will continue to be a driving force in this industry, no matter who's at the wheel.

The Search Engine Soap Operas

While we were writing this article,Microsoft made a bid to buy Yahoo!, and the search world was thrown for a loop.The combination of MSN and Yahoo! search properties, which some are calling “Microhoo,�would result in a search engine with substantial reach, power, and media content one that could compete with Google.This is big news, even to those of us who have been watching search engine acquisitions for years.

How do dramas such as this affect Your SEO Plan? Fortunately, you don't need to follow every twist and turn of every story. Because we focus on user friendliness, good targeting, and great content, the SEO plan in this article will help you create strategies that are robustly search-friendly, no matter what changes may come.Tactics that are specific to a certain search engine are labeled as such, and if consolidation strikes, a firm grip on the Eternal Truths “Eternal Truths of SEO,� will help you maintain your website's standings for the long haul.

MSN/Live Search

In case you didn't know, the MSN portal and its search engine, called Live Search, is a property of a quaint little organization known as “Microsoft Corp.� The youngest of the big search engines, MSN's modus operandi has been an ongoing game of copycat and catch-up as it tried to bring its interface and feature set up to the standards Google and Yahoo! have set. Then, in 2008, Microsoft abruptly switched tactics to “if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em� and made a bid to purchase Yahoo!.

Live Search is not entirely user friendly; in fact, it gets a lot of negative coverage by gloating SEOs who love to point out its many bugs and errors. But its image search is generally considered better than image search at Google and Yahoo! a rare example of Live Search outshining its predecessors. Even as Live Search struggles to look and act like a grown-up search engine, big daddy Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to try to significantly increase its market share.