Google could soon change the rules of keyword Internet marketing with the debut of its new Google Caffeine search engine. Right now, Google is not doing a good job of searching through social-media sites, like Twitter and Facebook. So the company is working on a new version of its popular search engine that will add them to the mix and shake up other sites’ rankings for certain keywords.
The online marketing firm 360i released a study a little while back in a blog entry on Digital Connections, entitled, “6 Things to Expect if Google Decaf Gets a ‘Caffeine’ Boost.” In the post, SEO Group Director Mike Dobbs and SEO Analyst Martha Mukangara noted some pretty surprising findings.
They included 40 retail keywords in their study of the differences between the first three pages of regular Google search results and Google Caffeine search results. The 40 keywords are made up of 10 major brand names (keywords), 10 retail head terms (single keywords), 10 retail torso terms (two-word phrases), and 10 retail long-tail phrases (four-word phrases).
They pointed out six ways the new search engine will dramatically affect online marketers’ strategies. For instance, 15 percent of all first-page rankings were different for the 40 keywords used in the study. Amazingly, the single keywords and two-word phrases saw 50 percent of their first-page results change with the new search engine.
The reason for this big change is the fact that Google Caffeine is focusing more on keyword relevance and it’s steering away from blogs and wikis in favor of social media, video, music, photo and other sites previously outside of its search capability.
Since single keywords are so general, they will face more competition from these new sites being allowed to vie for top ranking. Longer phrases, with four or more keywords, will benefit from the new system because they will be drawn from a smaller pool with a focus on how relevant they are to the searcher’s needs.
All of these changes could have serious consequences for ecommerce marketers. At the end of the article, the study’s authors give the following advice to them:
Marketers will need to keep a close eye on their own set of keywords and determine how results change if a switch-over does takes place… [I]f your keywords shift in rank, you will need to refresh your strategy and focus in on any results drop-offs, or take advantage of subsequent wins.
What an interesting topic. Be sure to keep coming back to the Submit Solution SEO Blog for the latest updates on Google and Bing, as well as other major search-engine trends.
This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog entry, “Internet marketers brace for Google Caffeine changes.” The photo of the upside-down YouTube page is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of engineroomblog.
Well, I think google has to choose Colombian coffee, The caffeinated version sandbox is still giving relevance to spam pages, Social media is unfiltered too.