It seems that every week these days, we receive a major new announcement from Google regarding either their algorithm or the way they share search data with users and companies.  Of course, it now seems that Bing doesn’t want to be outdone, so the number of announcements coming out of Washington seem to be increasing as well.  In reality, both companies continue to fight for their own respective shares of a search market, which according to a recent study by ComScore, is simply not growing. That whole not growing aspect to search is a major problem for both of these companies since they are publicly traded and as we all know, the stock market and investors want to see continued and sustainable growth over all times periods.  That means both giant tech companies are likely to continue looking for ways to increase revenue from other sources over time.

Google Keyword Data is Gone:

As Rand said over at Moz, we’re officially living in a world now where your Google organic search traffic is going to coming over, 100% as keyword not provided.  While Google itself is saying that the reasons are to restrict NSA data snooping and corporate snooping on their own end users, I do think that there are some real world reasons that Google might make the same change as well. For a small business owner, this makes it exceedingly difficult to tell what keywords are providing sales.  Although it isn’t as crucial for those of us who exist in small enough verticals to have some idea about what’s truly going on by checking by hand, for huge corporations it makes it virtually impossible to track what’s working in regard to SEO.  All that is to say simply, that if you want quality answers on what keywords are providing value, you are simply going to have to go back to paying for Pay Per Click advertisements to get some identifiable data in regard to the conversion rate of individual keywords.

Google keeps changing and improving the search algo – source

Google Continues to Identify Link Networks:

Over the weekend Google reportedly targeted and then took down another major link network, this one out of Russia.  For those of us spending time creating quality sites with good content, I can’t stress how important this continual action happens to be.  It simply isn’t fair for people to be playing by different sets of rules in rewards to the algorithms and how links are created.  Nice job here guys.

Bing Offers Page Zero:

Bing in many ways is fighting Google in traditional ways, you know like the old Microsoft vs Google battles from a decade ago.  One thing that I greatly appreciate about Bing these days is that they are beginning to offer auto suggestions in their search box, in much the same way that Google has for the past year or two.  While the technology isn’t new necessarily, given the increasing lack of information coming from Google in regard to keyword volume, seeing any type of additional information from Bing is incredibly useful and valuable.

Major changes as usual right?  Of course, it’s just another week in seach!

Mark Aselstine is the owner of Uncorked Ventures a wine club focused on delivering the best wine and value in the industry.  Competing against major media backed wine clubs means Mark needs to continue improving his search engine marketing knowledge, since he can’t outmarket competitors like the New York Times!