Las Vegas Web Design Blog | The Web Squad

In the latter part of 2009 both Google and Microsoft struck deals with Twitter almost simultaneously. This gave both search engines the ability to have real-time results for search queries. Microsoft hit the ground running with the deal and immediately released their version of real-time search also announcing that users with more followers will have their tweets ranked higher and those who essentially retweet will have those tweets ranked lower. Google, on the other hand, took its time to release its version of real-time search.

Google integrated real-time search with its traditional SERPs with its sources being a number of social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter of course. Sticking to tradition, Google did not release how they will rank tweets initially. However, in a recent interview with Amit Singhal, who led the development for real-time search for Google, with MIT’s Technology Review reviled one part of Google’s ranking algorithm for tweets.

From what Singhal said in the interview, Google will rank tweets in the same way it ranks web pages. It is, in essence, Google’s PageRank algorithm rewritten for Twitter; replace links with followers and you got its “TweetRank” algorithm. Singhal said that tweets will be ranked based not only on how many followers you have, but also “how reputable those followers are.”

The common practice of using hashtags in tweets may be a bad thing for those trying to rank their tweets. Hashtags are commonly a sign of low quality tweets and will become a part of Google’s spam control strategy. This may, in fact, cause a significant reduction in the usage of hashtags by Twitter users.

Being Google, they did not tell us everything about how they will rank tweets. Keep in mind that Twitter is Google’s only source for real-time search; Facebook, MySpace, and other social network, as well as blogs, will play a big role in real-time search. Though they have not released any official information, it is probable that Google will rank things like Facebook posts in the same way it will for Twitter.

Technorati Tags:
Google, Bing, Twitter, Search Engine Optimization

Google to Rank Tweets by http://thewebsquad.com/wordpress/index.php/2010/01/14/google-to-rank-tweets/ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.technologyreview.com.

There has been a lot of talk lately about Rupert Murdoch’s move to remove News Corp publications from the Google index. Much of the online community is calling him a crazed fool, but what if he is on to something and paving the way for others to follow suit on way or another.

In fact, for one of his publications, the Wall Street Journal, striking an exclusive search deal with Bing would not be a bad idea. According to Compete.com, WSJ.com receives the majority of its traffic from Bing already, roughly 18.75 percent, and another 6.3 percent from Yahoo which Microsoft will soon take over anyway. Google only provides about 11.5 percent of the total traffic going to WSJ.com

With the combined traffic from Bing and Yahoo, striking a $50 million search deal with Microsoft and only forfeiting about 11 percent of its traffic may not be such a bad idea after all. In fact Hitwise.com, which estimates that Google delivers about 26 percent of WSJ.com’s traffic, says that the majority of search terms that are driving traffic to WSJ.com through Google are navigation searches (i.e. The Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com, WSJ) and those searches should stay intact even if News Corp blocks Google.

With Murdoch’s plan looking like it will be very profitable and successful, other publishers are thinking about the idea of blocking Google as well. Could this be the beginning of the next era of search wars? We have always heard about news outlets getting exclusive interviews and what not, but what about exclusive indexing by search engines?

If exclusive indexing rights catches on search engines might seem more like television networks in the near future. Much like how people choose their favorite channels based on the programs it shows, people will choose their search engines based on the sites that it indexes. Engines will be fighting over sites like WSJ.com and Bloomberg.com so they can display their exclusive content.

However, with the number of big players in search is quickly coming down to two with Bing taking over Yahoo, and exclusive indexing is against Google’s mission of providing people with the most relevant content available. A few major sites may jump ship to Bing and ask to be removed from Google’s index, but people today are smart enough to find what they want anyway and Google still controls over 60 percent of all search engine traffic on the web. Google has already stated that they have no problem with removing WSJ.com from their index, or any other News Corp site for that matter.

WSJ.com is a rare anomaly on the web where it receives more traffic from Bing than Google, and if Google loses this small percentage of sites from its index it should have very little effect on its traffic anyway.

However, Bing is making a lot of noise in the search engine world an looking to have a 20 percent market share of internet search, providing that the Yahoo deal goes through, and it shows no signs of losing popularity. The next age of search may have just begun, are you ready?

Search Wars: The Fight for Exlusive Indexing by The Web Squad is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

In the world of SEO you don’t hear much about Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. This is because Bing is still has less than a 10 percent market share of all search engine traffic. However, it is gaining its market share, and fast to the demise of Yahoo. This increase in Bing’s market share has SEO’s looking at how to rank well for this new search engine that is still in its infancy compared to Google and Yahoo.

Not much has surfaced on how to rank well in Bing’s SERP’s due to its age, but in the webmasters blog on the Bing website it does tell us their link building policy and how to go about building links. It reads very much like a Google blog on link building, using many of the same standards as Google. The blog talks about site relevance, authority sites, and what will get you penalized.

In the blog they talk about something they call “spam rank” which factors how ‘spammy’ your site is, the lower the better. They also mentioned that in the webmaster tools on Bing, they tell you if your site is blocked from the index, and why which is new compared to Google. This tool could prove to be useful if a webmasters site is penalized from both Google and Bing, they can actually fix the problem instead of guessing why you were penalized in the first place.

Bing’s growing popularity may be the end for Yahoo, especially since both companies are in talks about Bing taking over Yahoo anyway. It is unlikely that Bing will be a major problem for Google by itself, but if they take over Yahoo, Bing could have a combined market share of 28 percent compared to Google’s 65 percent. The future of search engines could be an all-out cyber war.