Rob Hughes
UK Based SEO,  Genius  and Developer

Google

1. Ranking Algorithm (Introduction)

   So recently I’ve been doing a lot of work with link location networks at Summit Media, and from this I’ve been having a look at information I can get quickly and what effects it has on rankings – obviously we already have a scoring factor that we use for tasks like this but I’ve decided to start looking at this in a lot more detail.

   I’ve come up with a list of around 50 factors that I think I can get information for relatively quickly and easily which I will be starting my study with.

   I’ve started small and picked a high volume search term and are basing my initial analysis on just the top 20 results for this one term.
   Clearly there are a lot of issues with this but I think as an initial study to get some sort of basic information before I take things a step further this should work quite well.

   Not really got anything to share majorly at the minute, just thought I’d put up an introduction of the new project I’ve set myself…

   Here are a couple of example graphs that show some of the very top level analysis that I’m starting with

   

   Graph of relationship between Page Title Length and Google Rank

   

   Graph of relationship between Meta Description Length and Google Rank

   Clearly both of these have pretty poor relationships, not necessarily a bad thing – all information is good

2. Semantics and Link Networks

   Not really a lot of point in writing a long post here, just thought I’d let people know that I’ve just written a post about using Link Networks in Semantics (Link Removed because the post has been deleted due to issues out of my control ).

   Probably the first ‘proper’ post I’ve written that explains anything and it isn’t even on my website!

   Oh well, I’ll put something useful on here at some point!

   Ok, well this post has now been removed due to issues out of my control so that kind of kills one of the most useful things I’ve written on the web, with regards to SEO / Online / Anything not to do with cars generally… oh well

3. Yahoo! and MSN/Bing deal

   The agreement was originally scheduled to be announced in late October 2009. Surprise surprise this hasn’t happened!

   Obviously it is a very complicated agreement that the two companies have to make and as such it is taking a lot longer than the original suggestion (as these things always do).

   Both companies are apparently “optimistic” about a deal being completed early in 2010 although they haven’t yet specified a date (we’ll see, I think their idea of “early in 2010″ is going to be very different from other peoples)

   Yahoo! and Microsoft are hoping that once they have come to an agreement and things get implemented they are going to be able to challenge Google’s dominance of the search field (well, pretty much everything as it seems to be heading) … Personally I think that they will make very little impact at all, even with their combined technologies Google must have a lot of projects in the background that they haven’t mentioned anywhere yet – as with most recent releases they always have something to compete!

   A release, linked to by Hitwise UK Press Centre, by Livescience says:

   According to Experian Hitwise, Google accounted for 71 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Oct. 3, 2009. Yahoo! Search grabbed 16 percent and Bing 9 percent of searches, while the remaining 53 search engines accounted for just under 4 percent.

   This gives Yahoo! and Bing a combined share of 25% compared to Google’s 71% share (admittedly US only)

   This is compared to last years search shares which state that in December 2008 Google has a 72% share compared to the Yahoo! and MSN combined of 23%

   Basically Yahoo! and Bing/MSN/Microsoft are going to have to pull out something pretty heroic in my eyes to make a major dint in the Google monopoly!