Since Google's Penguin update people have been worrying about building links and the process they use to build links themselves.
What is the Penguin update all about?
In short, its Google’s latest attack on webspam – that is, those websites Google considers are ‘cheating’ their way to high rankings. Whereas the previous main update – ‘Panda’ – focussed on web content related issues, ‘Penguin’ focuses on the other main ranking factor – your backlinks. So, link farms, comment spam, paid for links, excessive interlinking between related sites, ‘unnatural’ anchor text, facile blog and forum posts are all under the spotlight. Here’s a post for you which will help you with getting your link building right.
How to build links
Firstly, when building links beware it needs to be seen as a natural process and so don’t just think about search engine rankings but think about where you place links and how these places will benefit you're website.
Your current links
As with with anything else it is best to start this process by looking at what you already have and trying to improve this first. The best way to do this is to visit your Google Webmaster account.
When you are logged in click through your links one at a time and check whether the link is on a relevant website; it is in a relevant place on the website and that the link has relevant anchor text. It can be beneficial if the anchor text includes your keyphrase for that page but really it is important that the link isn't simply your domain name. If the link is just your domain name you should see what you can do to change it, this will normally mean emailing the developer of the website that you have a listing on.
Once you have done this you don't only have more of an idea of how many link you have to your website but you also have a starting point which will allow you to track your links in future. So this is where you make a note of how many links you have and download these links so that you have a copy.
Looking at your competitors
Now that your links have been spring cleaned the next obvious point is to look at your competitor links to see if you can get additional online presence through the same areas. There are a couple of tools that are good for this: The SEO Moz Open Site Explorer and Back Link Watch
When using these tools you need to know who your competitors are so you can search for their links. You should already have a handful of competitors that you know of and have used for your keyphrase analysis. You should also type your keyphrases into Google to see if you have other online competitors that you didn't know of.
Once you have a list of domains simply work through these one at a time to see where they have links and if you think that you would benefit from links in the same place. Here you should also see how you can add links to these websites: Whether this is filling in a submission form or contacting a website owner.
Checking a website before building a link
You may of heard the term nofollow. This is a tag that can be added to a link to tell a search engine not to pass any link equity from one website to another and it looks like this:
<a href="http://www.domainname.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor Text Here</a>
If you only want links that pass equity from their website to your website then you should check the code on their website to see if they include this code. Also if the link is included within JavaScript then normally this link will not pass equity to your website.
So you are looking for code like this:
<a href="http://www.domainname.com">Anchor Text Here</a>
However there might be other attributes included within this such as id, class etc...
(<a class="bright-red" href="http://www.domainname.com">Anchor Text Here</a>)
Obviously when you check for the type of link you will need to look at links that exist on the website already.
You should also have the Google Toolbar installed on your website. This tool among other features has the Google Page Rank feature which allow you to see if a page had a PageRank and information on when it was cached.
Nowadays the Page Rank is only a small factor when looking at the importance of a website. However you should ensure that you are building a link from a website that has been cached by Google. To do this click on the Page Rank button then click on: Google Text Cache. If this gives you a 404 error then do not build a link from this website. If it hasn't been cached it has either been banned by Google or Google doesn't know it exists so the link will not be useful anyway.
Different types of links
There are a lot of different types of websites out there that you can get links from. Here are some of them:
Directories
Searching for directories
There are 2 main types of directories: Specific directories and General directories.
Specific directories are those that are industry or business specific. For example there are lots of directories out there that target travel such as Travel Directory. It is important to get listings on these types of website not only for search engines but to place your website in more potential search areas on the web.
There are literally millions of general directories across the web. For example one great directory is the Open Directory Project (also known as DMOZ). It is also useful to be placed on this type of directory, again to increase your websites exposure.
As well as increasing your website exposure links from directories will improve you search engine rankings.
How to add your website to a directory
Here is a guide to show you how to Add your website to a directory
Paid directory listings
Although technically it is okay to pay for a directory listing as long as it isn't paying for a guaranteed place on the directory and is paying for admin costs we recommend not paying for directory listings unless they are with Yahoo or Yell.
Forums and Blogs
In the past these have been seen as good places for links. This can still be good but this should not be simply logging into a blog or forum and and sneaking in a link where you can. Apart from this being very unnatural, in time these links will normally be removed and classed as spam. Also on forums doing this is normally breaking the advertising rules that you signed up for.
However you can build links from blogs and forums overtime by becoming a guest blogger and overtime the webmaster may give you your own author page or something similar where you can add in a mention of your website.
Taking part in forums and blogs may also help with rankings in the future. Now that social media is becoming more important in search being a guest blogger for multiple websites and blogging on your own website will increase your website visibility online.
Finding directories, forums and blogs
As well as finding links through competitors, links can also be found in other ways. A very effective way is by searching for directories, blogs and forums. This can be done by typing your main phrase after a phrase such as blog, directory or forum.
Here is a website that does this for you, all you do is type in your main phrase then click on the different links – Solo SEO. We recommend not solely using Google for this because you can find other links through the other search engines.
Social Bookmarking
There are a lot of social bookmarking websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and many more that people use more and more nowadays. These are fantastic websites for promoting blog posts but can also be used to promote your domain name as well. To do this you simply visit the website, register with them and start adding your social content. When you add a title for a link this will be the anchor text. Although some of these websites only offer nofollow or JavaScript links they are marketing tools within themselves and can add social equity to your website which as we mentioned earlier is becoming more important.
Articles
There are a lot of article and PR websites online that let you submit articles to them and some offer links back you your website. These links back you your website are normally because you include them within the article or in your personal information as the author of the article. Over the past few years these websites have started to remove most of the links within the article and added nofollow tags to the author informations. However again these can be useful to improve your online visibility and there are still a lot of websites out there that allow links to be included in the article, obviously if they are relevant.
Reciprocal links
Getting links from websites and people that you know is great for your website but you shouldn't just email every website that you find with a links page. This is something that should be done to improve a visitors experience.
So how can you exchange links without the old fashioned links/resources page? You should think about why a link from your website and a link from their website would benefit visitors then you should build this in. Here are a couple good examples:
Testimonials: Both having a small article explaining why you are happy working together;
Case Studies: Both explaining your business relationship: why it started; how it started, why you are both happy.
Summary
These are all good ways to manually increase your visibility online and most will also have the benefit of improving your search engines listings. However this need to be accompanied by exceptional content.
There are a lot of articles that discuss link building. These articles always include Do's and Dont's and where to find links. However they never actually explain how to get a link. So for this mini guide we are going to give you an example of how to add your website to a web directory.
Firstly, if you are unsure on how to find web directories in the first place please visit our Link Building Guide.
For this example we are going to use our website and a web directory called Little Web Directory.
Building a link on the Little Web Directory
Step 1: Please visit the little web directory
Step 2: Browse the categories and sub-categories to find the perfect place for your business
It might take a while to find your perfect place but it is worth looking for the best possible place to ensure the webmaster approves the link.
For this example we have chosen Internet then the sub-category Search Engine Optimization
(http://www.littlewebdirectory.com/links.asp?cat=197)
Step 3: Now that you have found the best place for your link you can click the Add Your Link in the menu on the top right corner.
Step 4: We will now fill in the form:
Step 4a: First fill in the Link Title, this is also sometimes known as Company Name or simply Title. This will be the anchor/link text for you link so you may want to include a phrase that you want to be found for here (we have included SEO Services in ours).
Step 4b: Link URL - This is the full location of where you want people to go once they have clicked on the link i.e. the optimised page that you are link building for. A lot of directories will only allow you to enter your homepage here.
Step 4c: Link Description - This is similar to a meta description (but should not be the same as your meta description), this is text that will explain your business/optimised page.
Step 4d: Email Address - Use a valid email address because visitors to this website might want to contact you and the webmaster may use this email address to validate your link.
Step 4e: Now you just need to click Submit.
Additional Notes
You may have noticed that there were other fields in the form above.
Suggested Category: If there isn't a specific category for your listing you can add one here within the correct category or sub-category. For example in our example I could have added Training Courses if we only provided training for Search engine optimization.
Reciprocal Link URL: If you want you can link back to the directory from your website, this is why they also have the box of code under this option. If you link back then this will improve your chance of getting a listing on the website but it is better not to link back (especially if you are building quite a few directory listings).
Other Directories
There are millions of directories and all of them are obviously not the same. However they do normally follow similar category formats and request similar fields in the submission forms. Some other fields are as follow:
Meta Description: For this you should actually give them the Meta description from the code on your website.
Meta Keywords: For this you should actually give them the Meta keywords from the code on your website.
Name: This is normally your name not your company name, however if there isn't a Title field and Name is at the top of the form this will be your anchor/link text.
Verification Code/Verify: This is usually a captcha code to prevent spam but sometimes this is a question such as What is 1 + 1?
Address: This is your company address
As you can see from these examples it is normally straight forward enough. So have fun creating links and don't forget... Don't buy guaranteed listings - Google won't like it
This month is mainly focussed on Google mainly because Google has been even busier than usual.
Google+ redesign
Google have announced a number of new features for Google+ including navigation and design changes.
Google says, “We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.”
Google targets web spam
In the last week of April Matt Cutts has announced that Google will make changes to it's algorithm specifically to target Black Hat SEO, or what Google call Black Hat WebSpam.
Here is an example of the type of WebSpam Google will be penalising (read the text it makes no sense):
Another step to reward high-quality sites
Google search query data improvements
When you log into Google Webmaster Tools you have probably noticed the Search Queries tool under Your Site On The Web. Over the last year this tool has changed a lot including some changes that to be honest aren't great: such as the average top position change which tells you your average top position for a keyphrase, however the problem is that this is an average and it you have listings in all 3 top positions your average position is 2.
Anyway, the changes include more historical data - from 35 days to 90 days, you can now see this data as soon as you verify your website and it collects up to 2,000 search terms.
Although this looks like a great tool I still think that Google Analytics is the best place to go for your website historical data.
Google Analytics 5
For a while now Google Analytics 5 has been an optional Beta and you have been able to switch to the older version. Now Google Analytics 5 is the main version and there is no more living in the past.
It may take a little bit of time to get used to the new layout but as soon as you do I'm sure you love it - We do...
Moving your website? Or just a redesign
When moving a website to a new domain name of redesigning a website with a new URL structure we always recommend setting up 301 redirects from the old content to the new content.
For small websites this is easy however for larger websites this is a lot more time consuming and web developers always recommend only redirecting some of the pages. Such as the top 10% of pages visited, or the top 200 pages.
Although the Google Webmaster Guidelines recommend redirecting all pages it is great to see Google writing an article to back this up: How to move your content to a new location.
Submitting images to Google
Google has announced how important it believes image searches are and offers additional information to help you get you images searched: 1,000 words about images.
Bing Keyword Suggestion Tool
Bing have released a new keywords suggestion tool.
This is a good tool to accompany other keyword suggestion tools. It is good for suggestions but it still makes more sense to use the Google Tool to work with search volumes.
Creating a content strategy
It is now a year after the launch of Google's Panda update and over the year we have seen a lot of websites penalised with every Google Panda upgrade. Although some of these website have been caught in the cross-fire most of these website had poor quality content. Ensuring your website has high quality content with relevant keyphrases has always been important to on-site optimisation and over the last year this has become more important than ever.
With Inbound Marketing becoming more important to promoting your website online it is important to create a content strategy rather than haphazardly trawling through your website adding extra content.
Its not just about your website of course as there are many places on the web to distribute your content to – not least of which is the social media sites mentioned below. Your website probably remains your most important digital asset though so is the best starting point.
Evaluate your website
Before creating a content strategy you should evaluate your website to see if there are any pages that are unnecessarily being indexed. These pages can be paginated product pages, non canonicalised pages, internal search result pages etc... The simplest way to find these is through a site search on Google (type [site:yoursite.com] into Google). The potential issue here is that duplicate content may have a detrimental affect on your Google rankings.
Revisit your Keyphrase Analysis
A good starting point should be to revisit your keyphrase analysis. It may have been a while since you performed your initial keyphrase analysis and although I'm sure you have performed keyphrase analysis when you have added new content to your website some of the initial analysis might be out of date or not performing well.
For this you should first work through your homepage and strongest pages on your website then move through to your deeper pages that are normally optimised for long-tail phrases.
Keeping a record
You should enter the keyphrases into a spreadsheet and include the page that they are included on.
Once you have this list you should perform the following tasks to ensure they are still good phrases:
Visit Analytics
You should login to your Analytics account and check to see how many visits you have had to see if the phrases are directing traffic to your website.
Search term suggestion tool
Visit a Search term suggestion tool such as Google's keyword tool to see if people are still searching for your keyphrases and to find alternative phrases that might be better.
Competitor analysis
Work through your competitors websites to see if there are any phrases that you should consider. However bear in mind that your competitors might not have it right...
Improving content
Now that we have the keyphrases we want we should ensure that each of these pages is well optimised for these phrases. Starting with the Title tags and meta data then moving to the content on the page. When writing the content for a page this content should be as interesting and definitive as possible. There is information on writing good content on our Homepage Optimisation Lesson
Content for the future
When you decide to create a content strategy you need to be in it for the long haul. This involves scheduling a given amount of time each week to content creation and engaging in social media.
Finding inspiration
While you revisited your keyphrase analysis you probably stumbled upon some more phrases that you can use in the future.
Transforming current content
Ask around the office. You probably already have a wide range of content that you haven't added to your website. This can include: guides, check lists, press releases, case studies, testimonials, Whitepapers, videos, articles etc..
Competitor content
See what your competitors are up to. Audit their website; see what type of content, how often they release this content, where they release this content (is this content being sent to their social media accounts)... Part of the audit should include gauging how good your competitor's content is and how yours can be much better.
Writing content
Now you should have a huge range of ideas about what to write about it is important not to simply start writing content and send it all out at once. Here are some tips on content and content distribution:
Decide where your content should go: Don't just add content to your website, think about other places to distribute including twitter, Facebook, Google+, Youtube, LinkedIn etc...
Decide how often to distribute: Don't just login at 2 p.m. every Friday for a few hours, spread your time through the week performing different tasks each day.
Keep up with trends: Don't get left behind, constantly monitor competitors and your industry to ensure your content is up to date.
Content Distribution Example
How Google Decide on Algorithm Changes
Google add 8 cameras and 16 microphones to a Google Algorithm Change meeting and broadcast this to the world. This video shows how every change even the smallest of changes get intense scrutiny by their search evaluation and ranking teams.
Google Improves it's Bad Ad Detection Process
Over the last few months there have been a few complaints about Google allowing malicious download ads and ads to websites containing scams and viruses. Although Google is always trying to detect and remove these ads they have improved their detection process considerably in March by:
- Allowing users to block counterfeit ads;
- Improving the automated systems that detect counterfeit ad to ban the advertiser and not just the ad;
- Google Staff will now actually view suspicious ads and decide whether to an them.
Six Fundamental SEO Tips
Google has released 6 SEO fundamental tips and here they are:
- Do something cool: This is a great way to stand out fro the competition;
- Include relevant words in your copy: Basically optimise your pages but don't keyword stuff, you can make sure your website is relevant for keywords without keyword stuffing;
- Be smart about your tags and site architecture: Our Free SEO lessons will show you how to align the title tag, meta keywords etc... on your website;
- Sign up for email forwarding in Google Webmaster Tools: SO you are the first to hear if Google sees anything wrong with your website;
- Attract Buzz: Write good interesting content that people will want to share and include social media buttons on your website to get natural links;
- Stay Fresh and Relevant: Keep content up to date and add new content whenever you can, however don't add content for the sake of it and keep the content relevant.
Google's Re-evaluation of Links Causes Problems
In February Google announced that it's changing the way it evaluates links. In particular they are switching off a method of link analysis that they have used for years. Now that this change and an update to Panda have been made we can see some websites de-indexed from Google.
In March it looks like blog networks have been hit by this change and Buildmyrank is actually shutting down.
Google has been cracking down on mass produced low quality content sites over the last year with Panda updates so the obvious next step was to move this into mass produced low quality links.
Splitting up a Sitemap
When a website has thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of pages we always tell our clients to split up the Sitemaps. This is a standard recommendation that will help a search engine spider the content of a website more easily.
Recently I have been working on The Works Book Shop website and after making this recommendation realised that the developer had simply split the sitemap up into random smaller Sitemaps.
Although this is much better than having one sitemap with thousands of links this can be so much better.
Using the Site Structure for the Sitemaps
Nowadays we all know how important the structure of a website is and a key element of this is the site navigation. Yes the good old three clicks rule. Every page on a website should be within three clicks of any other page on the same website.
This should happen naturally with a good site structure. For example normally an e-commerce website will have categories followed by sub-categories followed by products.
Surely this is what we should use for the structure when we split the sitemap up?
How to Split up a Sitemap
Above gives us the theory of how to split up a sitemap. So how do we actually do it?
When you split up a sitemap you can also include a sitemap of the sitemaps i.e. a sitemap that contains a list of sitemap on your website. This is called a sitemap index.
I find it is always best to work from the bottom up. So you start with grouping products together then work your way up to categories.
- Set up a Sitemap for all of your sub categories, each Sitemap will contain all of the product URL's for that sub category;
- Set up a Category Sitemap which contains a list of category URL's;
- Set up a Static page Sitemap. The Static pages are pages such as Home, About us etc...
- Set up a Sitemap Index that contains a list of all the sub category Sitemaps and the Static and Category Sitemaps.
Now you have a Sitemap Index that is a list of all of the Sitemaps on your website and all of you products are nicely split up into sub category sitemaps.
Why you should structure your Sitemaps
Apart from ensuring that the Sitemaps are easy to spider by search engines using this method will also help you in the future. After submitting these Sitemaps to Google Website Tools if you encounter any spidering issues via Google you can easily track where the error is rather than working through your website one page at a time.
Important Notes
It is important to remember the Sitemap Index can only link to Sitemaps and each Sitemap can only link to URL’s.
Also each URL should only be included once within all of the Sitemaps so if we have products that are included in more than one category then we need to either chose a category for the sitemap.
Nowadays we spend a lot of time in Google Webmaster Tools ensuring that our websites are running as smoothly as possible. So it's great to hear about Google's most recent change to their Crawl Error Tool.
Until recently Google has reported all crawl errors as URL errors but this isn't always the case sometimes there are errors across a full domain that affect all URL's. Google will now label these separately as Site Errors
What's the difference between Site Errors and URL Errors?
Site errors are not specific to URL's, they are errors that affect your whole website. Errors such as web server connectivity errors, problems accessing the robots.txt file, DNS resolution errors etc... However errors that are specific individual pages/URL's on your website are now flagged as URL Errors.
Site Errors
In the past Google reported site errors as URL errors. However this didn't make sense because they aren't specific to individual URL's but are errors with the full website and sometimes these errors would stop the Googlebot from even accessing the website.
Obviously if your website has no errors then you will see this in the tool.
URL Errors
If you have no site errors then you can have a look through any possible URL errors that you may have, safe in the knowledge that these aren't site errors and each error can be fixed individually.
There have also been some improvements to the URL Errors Tool. You can now instantly filter and sort the errors by any column which helps us to fix these errors in any order we want to such as by error type which is extremely useful.
With this tool we can also dive deeper into each individual error giving us more information about the error. Such as where the error is occurring (whether it is links from a page of the sitemap) and an actual link to the page so we can see the error in action.
We can also track the errors we have fixed by marking them as fixed. Goole will then remove these errors from the tool. However if the error is in fact not fixed then Google will flag this error again next time id indexes the page.
SEO is a self contained discipline which requires understanding of the way Google ranks sites. As many know its about understanding the way Google treats content and in bound links and a few other important factors.
Increasingly however SEO is becoming viewed as a component in a wider ‘inbound marketing’ context….
The diagram above implies a close overlapping between other important online marketing spheres – collectively the above are often considered the three main cornerstones of inbound marketing. They are all valid and useful in their own right but the combination of these areas and the interrelationship leads to a results which is substantially greater than the sum of the parts.
So lets examine this synergy and look at how we can optimise the relationship between them and see if we can improve our SEO as a by-product of other activities.
Content Marketing
In its simplest form this just means getting as much content out as a many different and relevant places on the web as possible – guides, whitepapers, ebooks, press and new releases, articles, blog posts, posts on related blogs, product reviews, directory listings forums – etc, there are many different types of content and lots of places on the web to direct them; for most small businesses it’s a question of resources to produce this content but it starts with a review (audit) of what electronic content gets produced already (quite often a lot more than you might think).
Additional content types can be identified as important and resources put in place for its production. Using outsourced third parties to produce this content is also an option.
(Incidentally we’ll be sending out a Create Great Content tutorial over the next couple of weeks so sign in to our Google Plus VIP circle if you want to get a copy automatically - Jan’s VIP Circle)
How does Content Marketing impact SEO?
In two ways:-
- In bound links are still one of the main – if not he main – factor in your Google rankings. Ensuring there are links back to the website from this content – and more importantly ensuring there are keyword rich ‘anchor text’ links back to relevant pages of your site is very important. It can be argued that this ‘content based’ approach to link building is more effective than other forms since it involves a range of different types of sites to get links from for a wide range of phrases so it’s more ‘natural’
- The other way of course is that just the sheer tasks of getting more content out on the web increases your visibility. Depending on what keyphrases people use in their search you may get content displaying in the Google hitlist from a variety of sources rather than just your web site – from article sites, Youtube if you distribute videos, , your LinkedIn profile and so on. Even from ‘directory’ sites like the one below if you have sent your content to them….
So, as a first step look at the content your organisation already produces and work out where to distribute it to on the web, who will do it and how often it gets done…..then you can build from there.
Social Media Marketing
Again, important in its own right for marketing. If you are not using any platform at the moment look at how your competitors are using social media as a starting point. If you are B2C Facebook may have strong relevance; if B2B the LinkedIn may be a good start. Of course there are others to consider like Twitter (see www.twellow.com the Twitter directory to see what others in your sector are doing) and YouTube which is now a major platform for business promotion
Incidentally we’ll be sending out a LinkedIn for Business tutorial over the next couple of weeks so sign in to our Google Plus VIP circle if you want to get a copy automatically (Jan’s VIP Circle)
How does Social Media Marketing impact SEO?
In four ways:-
- Directly in the search results – as above – quite often social media sites will show in search results as well as, or instead of, your website – depending on the keyphrase searched for…
- Link Building – Some Social Media sites will transfer ‘link juice’ to help your rankings. Its important to note not all will do this – particularly the major ones like Facebook for example. This is because they use the ‘no follow’ tag to tell the spiders not to crawl. You can check by viewing the ‘source code’ and searching for ‘no follow’. Many blogs and Social Bookmarking sites do count however (and bit.ly does although Twitter doesn’t!)
- Better ranking through social signals.Here’s a scenario….Lets say a new product from Dell gets announced and unfortunately there are problems with it with grievances and comments shared all over Twitter. Someone does a Google search for product reviews –what’s more important for Google to show in the results? – is it the product description on Dell’s website (which maybe weeks out of date depending on when the spider last visited ) or the bang up to date discussion on Twitter? Google of course wanting to show the most relevant and recent would not be happy showing just Dell website information.So this is a simple example of how social media activity should, and is, impacting search results. So Facebook Likes, Twitter retweets and many other signals are now used by Google to display the most important results and why we should encourage social media interaction with our brand.
- Integration of Social with searchThe example above shows how important it is for Google to access information on social media sites, and much of the information on a major social site – i.e. Facebook – is not available to Google which is probably one of the reasons Google has launched its own very important platform ‘Google Plus’.We've posted previous blogs about the importance of this and how to set up a good Google Plus Business Page yourselves. But the most significant thing is that we are already seeing strong integration of Google Plus activity within the search results. At the moment in the US you have the option of including G Plus results in the search results– soon it will be here and soon after it wont be optional – Google will intersperse G Plus content within the search results when it sees fit. The take away here is to set up a G Plus business page (like 100 million others already have), start using it to communicate with your audience and encourage people to Plus One (
) you.
So just to put things into perspective – SEO is still the jewel in the inbound marketing crown. There are 10.3 billion searches on Google every month from people looking for stuff; on Facebook, the largest social media platform by far, there are (only) 850 million people communicating (generally not looking for stuff). But – by participating intelligently with Content and Social Media Marketing activities as well as SEO, and because of the inextricable interrelatedness of all three we surely have a 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 5 situation. (or possible 7!)
Image Previews (Available in the UK and USA)
For quite a while now Google has offered Related Searches in search results which has been very useful. This is also a feature that has improved image searches and now Google has taken this a step further and will actually give samples of images for these related searches which is fantastic to help with finding exactly what you’re looking for or just have fun exploring.
For example if you search for London the related searches show as London Underground, London Eye, London Big Ben etc... Now you can hover over one of these results to show a small selection of associated images.
Related Maps (Available in the UK and USA)
Google now shows sitelinks for maps listings which is a great improvement. Again a great example of this is London. When you search for London. You will now see sitelinks under the map listings allowing you to view Hotels, Restaurants and tourist locations.
Health Results (Only available in the USA for now)
More and more people are searching for health information on Google and now Google has made a big change to improve the search results. Google's data shows that a search for symptoms is often followed by a search for a related condition.
So Google have now made this process easier by showing possible related health conditions for the for the symptoms that you have searched for. For example, if you search for abdominal pain on my right side, you’ll be able to quickly see some potentially related conditions and learn more about them by clicking on the links in the list.
These are search results and are not authored by doctors or other medical experts
As mentioned last month Google is now publishing search quality improvements each month. In January as well as the Search Plus Your World Google we have already discussed Google has made another interesting change.
As part of Google's commitment to provide the best search results they have released a new Page Layout Algorithm Improvement. This is an improvement that Google has made directly from complaints from searches.
Many searchers have complained that when they visit a website they have to scroll down you find the content that they are looking for; normally this involves scrolling past ads on the page. So Google has now made an algorithm change to help websites that have useful content above-the-fold to rank better than other websites where the content is below-the-fold.
Many websites that do not have ads above-the-fold but offer no or little content above-the-fold may get caught in the cross-fire. Although this sounds very worrying Google have stated that this algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally.
Here are some other changes Google have published on the Google Insider Blog:
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Fresher results;
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Faster autocomplete;
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Autocomplete spelling corrections;
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Better spelling full-page replacement;
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Better spelling corrections for rare queries;
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Improve detection of recurrent event pages;
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High-quality sites algorithm improvements;
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Cross-language refinements;
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English on Google Saudi Arabia;
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Improved scrolling for Image Search;
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Improved image search quality;
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More relevant related searches;
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Blending of news results;
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Automatically disable Google Instant based on computer speed.
For more information on these updates visit the Google Insider Blog