Google has provided its 30 most recent search changes with code names. These are search quality updates. Read these to improve your knowledge of latest algorithm changes so you may stay at top of your game.

Rankings:

• Image Search landing page quality signals. [launch codename “simple”] This is an improvement that analyzes various landing page signals for Image Search. We want to make sure that not only are we showing you the most relevant images, but we are also linking to the highest quality source pages.
• Better spam detection in Image Search. [launch codename “leaf”] This change improves our spam detection in Image Search by extending algorithms we already use for our main search results.

Search Results:

• More relevant sitelinks. [launch codename “concepts”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] We improved our algorithm for picking sitelinks. The result is more relevant sitelinks; for example, we may show sitelinks specific to your metropolitan region, which you can control with your location setting.
• More accurate country-restricted searches. [launch codename “greencr”] On domains other than .com, users have the option to see only results from their particular country. This is a new algorithm that uses several signals to better determine where web documents are from, improving the accuracy of this feature.
• More rich snippets. We improved our process for detecting sites that qualify for shopping, recipe and review rich snippets. As a result, you should start seeing more sites with rich snippets in search results.
• More accurate byline dates. [launch codename “foby”] We made a few improvements to how we determine what date to associate with a document. As a result, you’ll see more accurate dates annotating search results.
• Google Instant enhancements for Japanese. For languages that use non-Latin characters, many users use a special IME (Input Method Editor) to enter queries. This change works with browsers that are IME-aware to better handle Japanese queries in Google Instant.
• Related query improvements. [launch codename “lyndsy”] Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are related to the original query but have fewer words. We made several changes to our algorithms to make them more conservative and less likely to introduce results without query words.
• Tweak to +1 button on results page. As part of our continued effort to deliver a beautifully simple user experience across Google products, we’ve made a subtle tweak to how the +1 button appears on the results page. Now the +1 button will only appear when you hover over a result or when the result has already been +1’d.
• Better spell correction in Vietnamese. [project codename “Pho Viet”] We launched a new Vietnamese spelling model. This will help give more accurate spelling predictions for Vietnamese queries.
• Improvements to image size signal. [launch codename “matter”] This is an improvement to how we use the size of images as a ranking signal in Image Search. With this change, you’ll tend to see images with larger full-size versions.
• Improved Hebrew synonyms. [launch codename “SweatNovember”, project codename “Synonyms”] This update refines how we handle Hebrew synonyms across multiple languages. Context matters a lot for translation, so this change prevents us from using translated synonyms that are not actually relevant to the query context.
• Encrypted search available on new regional domains. Google now offers encrypted search by default on google.com for signed-in users, but it’s not the default on our other regional domains (eg: google.fr for France). Now users in the UK, Germany and France can opt in to encrypted search by navigating directly to an SSL version of Google Search on their respective regional domains: https://www.google.co.uk, https://www.google.de andhttps://www.google.fr.
• Faster mobile browsing. [launch codename “old possum”, project codename “Skip Redirect”] Many websites redirect smartphone users to another page that is optimized for smartphone browsers. This change uses the final smartphone destination url in our mobile search results, so you can bypass all the redirects and load the target page faster.

Webmaster:

• Soft 404 Detection. Web servers generally return the 404 status code when someone requests a page that doesn’t exist. However, some sites are configured to return other status codes, even though the page content might explain that the page was not found. We call these soft 404s (or “crypto” 404s) and they can be problematic for search engines because we aren’t sure if we should ignore the pages. This change is an improvement to how we detect soft 404s, especially in Russian, German and Spanish. For all you webmasters out there, the best practice is still to always use the correct response code.

Backend:

• Better infrastructure for autocomplete. This is an infrastructure change to improve how our autocomplete algorithm handles spelling corrections for query prefixes (the beginning part of a search).
• Improved dataset for related queries. We are now using an improved dataset on term relationships to find related queries. We sometimes include results for queries that are related to your original search, and this improvement leads to results from more relevant related queries.
• Safer searching. [launch codename “Hoengg”, project codename "SafeSearch"] We updated our SafeSearch tool to provide better filtering for certain queries when strict SafeSearch is enabled.

Answers:

• Live results for NFL and college football. [project codename “Live Results”] We’ve added new live results for NFL.com and ESPN’s NCAA Football results. These results now provide the latest scores, schedules and standings for your favorite football teams.
• Better lyrics results. [launch codename “baschi”, project codename “Contra”] This change improves our result quality for lyrics searches.
• Upcoming events at venues. We’ve improved the recently released places panel for event venues. For major venues, we now show up to three upcoming events on the right of the page. Try it for [staples center los angeles] or [paradise rock club boston].

Related posts:

1. 10 Recent Google Search Changes – Be Prepared SEOs
2. Topsy, A Search Engine Based on Tweets
3. Complete Search Engine Domination 12 Steps

Here are the 10 for last month.

1. “Related query results refinements.” More results will be excluded when synonyms and related terms conflict with other words or phrases in the search query.
2. “More comprehensive indexing.” Google is getting better at finding long-tail documents, making long-tail optimization even more important.
3. “New ‘parked domain’ classifier.” Google now detects parked domains more easily, making them less likely to show up in the SERP.
4. “More autocomplete predictions.” Does what it says.
5. “Fresher and more complete blog search results.” Blog content now has a faster and deeper indexing system, making your blog even more valuable and likely to surface on the SERP.
6. “Original content.” Google has “added new signals to help us make better predictions about which of two similar web pages is the original one.” In other words, Google has added some scraper counter-measures.
7. “Live results for Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League.” Does what it says.
8. “Image result freshness.” Google is now better at finding fresh images for news queries.
9. “Layout on tablets.” Tablet users will see some changes in the color and layout that make Google more usable.
10. “Top result selection code rewrite.” The code that “ensures that we don’t show too many results from one site” has been rewritten. While it will behave the same as before, it is now “easier to understand, simpler to maintain, and more flexible for future extensions.”

Related posts:

1. Google’s Most Recent Search Quality Changes
2. Topsy, A Search Engine Based on Tweets
3. Google Notifying Webmasters After Reconsideration Requests

Links are very important factor in ranking of a website in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). All major search engines consider back links as a major factor in deciding quality of a webpage. Google’s PR algorithm is based on backlinks.

SEO and link building is not what it used to be few years back. Google these days pays more importance on quality of backlinks than quantity. A relevant contextual backlink is far more valuable than a handful of unrelated low quality backlinks.

In this article we are discussing 3 ways to get high quality baklinks for free.

1. Free Backlink from Apple.com

Apple.com is PR 9 and the page itself where you are getting link is PR 7.  Work around to get this juicy, high quality link is to create an Iphone App. And to do it, you just need to create a Web App made for the iPhone and then submit it to their directory. You can even create something basic and simple (but I would suggest useful).

This simple search on Google, give lots of ideas on creating an Iphone App.

2. Grab You Free Backlink for Google Profiles

You can use Google Profiles to grab a free link from Google.com. You just need to fill the information that they ask about yourself, include the URL of your website, add some pictures and description, one more backlink. As long as you add enough information, your profile will be displayed in Google’s search results, and it should count as a normal backlink because Google does not use the nofollow attribute on the website links.

You can also use this service to improve your SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management), as this profile is going to rank with your name in search results. You can see my profile here.

3. Backlink from a PR 10 website, Adobe.com!

Adobe.com is one of the few elite those have PR 10 so you can imagine how much authority that domain have. If you use Adobe products and have done some development you can get a PR from subdomain, forums.adobe.com which has a PR 9 by joining its communities and adding your backlink in your profile.

Their are many other easier ways to get backlinks from high PR domains, do you have used any? Please share your experiences.

Related posts:

1. Topsy, A Search Engine Based on Tweets
2. 10 Recent Google Search Changes – Be Prepared SEOs
3. SEO Keyword Research

Earlier this month, Google’s Matt Cutts sent a shockwave through the advanced SEO community by saying that site owners could no longer perform “PageRank sculpting” using the nofollow tag in the way they’d previously thought. Now Matt’s posted more explanation about the change.

Here is a quote from that post that summarizes the change:

So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.

Daniel Socco at DailyBlogTips has given an excellent explanation of this change and how it is going to effect us.

In other words, the usage of the nofollow attribute will still stop the page that is being linked to from receiving PageRank and anchor text value, but the PageRank that is being “saved” with the nofollow links won’t flow to the other links present in the linking page.

Google want to stop PageRank Sculpting, its fine but this change is negatively effecting bloggers. This change is going to encourage blog spam and also pages will have low PR. All the links on your comment section are reducing the PageRank that would otherwise flow to your internal pages. Google might do something to fix this problem, but we still got to hear about it.

Is there any solution to this problem? You might close your comments section that is not a reasonable thing to do. Or you can use an iframe or Javascript based solution to keep comments out of same page.

If you’re using WordPress you can edit your theme to remove commentators URL.

Do you have any solution? Share it with us in our comments section.

Related posts:

1. Getting High PR Backlinks
2. Adsense CPM Ads
3. 10 Recent Google Search Changes – Be Prepared SEOs

Subject: We’ve processed your reconsideration request for [mywebsite.com]
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: [mywebsite.com].
We’ve now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it’s in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don’t find any problems, we’ll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn’t appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.

So now, if you submit a reconsideration request, you can know a bit later if your site is still in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines or not. This is a most welcomed addition.

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