Freshness May Count More in Google These Days (Not Just Because of Caffeine)

Google’s new SERP design (you know, with the left-hand panel), has created more areas for webmasters to focus their SEO efforts on. While most of the options available here have been available for quite some time, they are now in the user’s face and they will be used more.
Has the new user interface affected your traffic? For better or for worse? Tell us.
Opportunities
WebProNews spoke with Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, at Google I/O recently. He talked a bit about the new Google SERP redesign, and the opportunities it creates for businesses to reach users beyond that one "trophy phrase".

More WebProNews Videos

"The trick – the thing that’s really important – is that it’s different depending on what you’re searching for," he says. "So if you’re searching for Tom Cruise, you’re more likely to see images and options for the different types of image search – you can say, ‘show me the color images’ or ‘show me the large images’, whereas if you’re searching for Obama, you’re more likely to get real-time results, and updates, and stuff like that. So, what I like about it it is it surfaces more ways to slice and dice your data, and even if you’re not a power user, if you’ve got those options on the left-hand side, you’re more likely to kind of try to explore a little more. So that’s a good opportunity for webmasters and SEOs. You know, you don’t have to be number one. Maybe you can be number one in a slightly different area that people will find by exploring."
"Some people get really obsessed with their one trophy phrase, or their one number one ranking, for their number one web search, and they don’t think about things like image search or video search, blog search, or book search – you know, people, it’s not that hard to write a book," he continues. "It can be done. And people also tend to think about search engines, when they might want to think about social media – things like Twitter, things like Facebook…because you want to go where the people are. And people aren’t ONLY searching. They’re hanging out online. You know, they’re on forums. So I think a lot of the time, you can think about ‘where can I show up besides just number one? What are the phrases people are gonna type in that show buying intent’ – where they really would like to get your product? And if you’re paying attention to those sorts of areas, and not just the trophy phrases, then you can find a lot more opportunities."
Matt also talks a little more about the new UI and the speed of which Google indexes content here.
Which of the options available in the new user interface have you found most helpful? Share your thoughts.
Where Freshness Comes In
One of the most important elements of this new user interface is the time filter – you can filter results by anytime, latest, past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year, or by a custom range. This isn’t just about real-time search, it’s about having regularly updated content, and staying fresh (though real-time search has its place within that).
Brian Klais, General Manager and VP of Product Mangagement at Covario, has a really good post over at Search Engine Land, talking about the time dimension in Google and its effect on sites’ rank – in other words, how content appears when a user adjusts the time filter in the left-panel.
"Here’s the bottom line: By institutionalizing a search time dimension with their UI, Google has introduced a new opportunity for all brands to steal (or have stolen) search marketshare from (or by) the competition," says Klais. "Brands that focus on dynamic site content with fresh social media output stand to gain searchers, at the expense of those brands who stay stagnant, one query at a time. The speed at which the gains and losses occur will be magnified by the availability (or lack) of content within each time filter. Now the ‘recency’ of social media will begin to matter in search."
To illustrate what he’s talking about, he points to a query for "men’s jeans" and looks at the results (which are quite different) for each time constraint. Based on this example, the smaller brand sites have a better shot at showing up the more frequently they are updated. The bigger brands tend to rank higher, the wider the range of time selected.
"The issue is a classic chicken or egg problem: unless you are present in the ‘fresh’ results now (aka ‘recency’), you cannot accurately predict what percentage of searchers are shifting to time-filtered results in order to make the business case for action," Klais says.  "Most analytic systems will not yet parse out this traffic either; it is just lumped in with all Google organic results."
"Ask yourself this question," he adds. "Is there a way to estimate whether any of your current keyword markets are time-sensitive and if you are currently getting organic traffic from time-filtered results?"
Of course, you don’t want to obsess over the time filter either. It’s just one of many options to consider, but to me, a blog could be a good way to keep offering fresh and relevant content around the keywords you are targeting. Plus, it can help you in the blog search option, not to mention provide useful content and engage an audience.
Note: Interestingly enough, not long after I wrote this article, Google announced that Caffeine is now complete. This is the new version of Google’s indexing system. It does not affect how Google ranks content whatsoever. What it does is speed up how fast Google indexes content. You can learn more about it here, and in this other interview with Cutts from SMX this past week. Essentially, it’s all about providing users with the freshest content possible, which is why it is somewhat related to the topic discussed above.

Will Dmoz Continue to Have a Place in Search?

Nearly a year ago, we looked at what Dmoz (aka: The Open Directory Project) was up to, and if it still had a place in search. The directory was talking about how it was looking for "a little respect" as it prepared to celebrate its 11th birthday (on June 5).

Has Dmoz earned any more of that respect going into its 12th year? Tell us what you think.
Dmoz has been brought back into the discussion as Google’s Matt Cutts appeared in a new Google Webmaster Help Video answering the following user question:

Why is Google still taking notice of DMOZ? Many have alleged that the editors are corrupt. It’s impossible to get them to list a site even if it is very relevant to a specific area.
"I know that people do have complaints about Dmoz, and we don’t show it in our one-Google-sort of tabs at the top of the page like we used to in previous years, but in some countries, it can be very hard to type in queries. It can take a lot of time," says Cutts. "For example in something like Chinese or Japanese or Korean, sometimes it might be easier to browse by clicking, rather than typing in the query, and so especially in those sorts of countries, it can be very helpful to show Dmoz."
"But we don’t use Dmoz in a lot of the ways that we used to. We don’t show the Dmoz categories or the Open Directory categories beneath the snippet, and we used to do that," he adds. "We don’t show it on the main page like we used to anymore. So if you’re frustrated, you can always try a different category that you also think is relevant. You can always go to editors up the chain. But in general, if you can’t get into Dmoz, I wouldn’t necessarily worry about it. There are a lot of other great places to get links across the web."
Dmoz continues down the slope it’s been on for quite some time in terms of unique visitors. Google not giving it as much play certainly must play at least some role in this. It does get over 18% of its referrals from Google:

Dmoz on its Own Future
Dmoz swears it still has plenty of life left in it, so if you believe the editorial department, there may be new opportunities from Dmoz down the road. In a post earlier this year, reflecting upon the last decade, Bob Keating, Dmoz editor-in-chief said, "Over the ’00 decade, DMOZ has grown to be one of the most successful collaborative projects on the web. It has outlasted its commercial counterparts, and continues to be relevant in the search industry. The keys to its longevity and usefulness are its dedicated community, its open, collaborative editorial model, its non-commercial nature, and open data distribution channel."
"While DMOZ receives hundreds of editor applications, and lists thousands of websites each week, it needs a new Plan – a new blueprint for the future of how the web is organized, and how human organized data is consumed," he says. "Using traditional web directories as a means for information discovery is a thing of the past. However, the need for organized web-based content continues to grow exponentially. The future of DMOZ does not lie merely in improving its toolset, making it more SEO friendly, or convincing others of its collective brilliance. Its future lies in turning the entire thing on its head."
Keating went on to list some goals for this decade, including the development of an API for Dmoz data to allow editors and developers to write new apps using it. He also wants to transform Dmoz from a fixed-path directory to "the largest faceted system for organizing information on the web," have it become a "major influencer" for bringing the semantic web out of the lab/enterprise and into the entire web, and transforming Dmoz into a "suite of products with multiple levels of participation and engagement."
Things have been pretty quiet on the Dmoz front since then. The only updates on the Dmoz blog have been from editors talking about their experiences editing specific categories. Perhaps that is because some of the aforementioned goals are in the process of being realized behind the scenes.

What’s More Important in Search? Freshness or Quality?

It's been a while since we looked at one of the Google Q&A webmaster videos that Matt Cutts does, but I found this recent one particularly interesting, considering the emphasis that has been put on freshness in search engines lately. 

How important is freshness to you as a search engine user? Share your thoughts here. 

The user question in this particular video says:

Some people are under the impression that blogs are good for SEO only if they're updated frequently. How much does frequency play into PageRank for blogs & other dynamic sites? Isn't the content more important than the simple # of posts per day/week?

Matt's response is that it is indeed much more important to have quality content, but frequency can be a nice thing to have for the users. 

Essentially, if you post more frequently, people have more of a reason to keep coming back. That can be good for page views. However, as Matt says...

"Whenever you're thinking about search engines, it's much, much, much more important to think about the quality of your content. For example, on my blog, I don't post every day. Sometimes I don't post every week. But I try to make sure that each post has something useful about it..."

Matt implies that you'll be better off in terms of search, if you wait until you can deliver some value to a post, rather than just crank stuff out that isn't that much different than stuff that's already out there. This strategy is likely to attract a lot more links, he says. 

Quality is always priority one, but I don't think that's to say that freshness doesn't count. For example, as we looked at recently,

Google's time filters (which are more readily available to searchers, courtesy of the recent redesign of the SERPs), not to mention the realtime results Google often displays, can add some benefit to providing fresh content. Brian Klais, General Manager and VP of Product Mangagement at Covario had a very interesting post at Search Engine Land looking at how the time filter may even help smaller brands get some visibility.

Of course Google has gone out of its way with Caffeinehttp://bisnispulsagratis-mu.blogspot.com/ to increase the speed at which it indexes content so it can provide the freshest results possible.

Do you take freshness into account for your search engine marketing strategy?

NYT Gets The Goods On Google

When SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin calls something “quite possibly the best mainstream media article about Google, or modern search technology, in the last 5 years,” it’s pretty much our duty to cover it. When Rand Fishkin writes 800 words about said article, well . . . we know better than to condense and summarize.

Here’s the original article, then, straight from Saul Hansell of the New York Times. Fishkin calls it “informative to even those . . . most deeply inside the search industry . . .”

Matt Cutts gave his opinion about the piece, as well; though he was “a little worried” about having Hansell hang around the Googleplex, Cutts feels the article “does a good job of describing search quality at Google.”

Interested? Well, summarization just isn’t practical, but hitting the highlights might be. Fishkin begins by noting, “It’s nice to hear . . . that the current competitive advantage is primarily about the relevance of results.” Furthermore, “The Google bug system reminds us that behind all the magic, human beings toil to ensure quality, compare individual results and make tweaks based upon the best aggregate changes.”

There’s also some fairly straightforward talk about the freshness of Google’s results. “It’s nice to get confirmation and feel the vindication of this transparency, but there’s also a lesson to be learned - Google isn’t perfect and they often look inward,” writes Fishkin. “The note that this problem wasn’t addressed until the query ‘Google Finance’ didn’t show ‘Google Finance’ is strong evidence that Google is like many other companies. Things don’t get fixed unless the folks internally feel the pain of the problem.”

Then, at the very end of Fishkin’s coverage, comes another rush of information, which he describes as “a lot of confirmation about what many have only theorized until now.” At stake are “200 signals of quality . . . a classification system that attempts to determine query intent and an automated system to determine diversity.”

Again, this write-up is meant as more of a heads-up than a substitute for reading the real thing. When you’ve got time to read and process about 4,000 words’ worth of text, Saul Hansell’s original piece is definitely worth a look.

NYT Gets The Goods On Google

When SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin calls something “quite possibly the best mainstream media article about Google, or modern search technology, in the last 5 years,” it’s pretty much our duty to cover it. When Rand Fishkin writes 800 words about said article, well . . . we know better than to condense and summarize.

Here’s the original article, then, straight from Saul Hansell of the New York Times. Fishkin calls it “informative to even those . . . most deeply inside the search industry . . .”

Matt Cutts gave his opinion about the piece, as well; though he was “a little worried” about having Hansell hang around the Googleplex, Cutts feels the article “does a good job of describing search quality at Google.”

Interested? Well, summarization just isn’t practical, but hitting the highlights might be. Fishkin begins by noting, “It’s nice to hear . . . that the current competitive advantage is primarily about the relevance of results.” Furthermore, “The Google bug system reminds us that behind all the magic, human beings toil to ensure quality, compare individual results and make tweaks based upon the best aggregate changes.”

There’s also some fairly straightforward talk about the freshness of Google’s results. “It’s nice to get confirmation and feel the vindication of this transparency, but there’s also a lesson to be learned - Google isn’t perfect and they often look inward,” writes Fishkin. “The note that this problem wasn’t addressed until the query ‘Google Finance’ didn’t show ‘Google Finance’ is strong evidence that Google is like many other companies. Things don’t get fixed unless the folks internally feel the pain of the problem.”

Then, at the very end of Fishkin’s coverage, comes another rush of information, which he describes as “a lot of confirmation about what many have only theorized until now.” At stake are “200 signals of quality . . . a classification system that attempts to determine query intent and an automated system to determine diversity.”

Again, this write-up is meant as more of a heads-up than a substitute for reading the real thing. When you’ve got time to read and process about 4,000 words’ worth of text, Saul Hansell’s original piece is definitely worth a look.

Will Dmoz Continue to Have a Place in Search?

Nearly a year ago, we looked at what Dmoz (aka: The Open Directory Project) was up to, and if it still had a place in search. The directory was talking about how it was looking for "a little respect" as it prepared to celebrate its 11th birthday (on June 5).

Has Dmoz earned any more of that respect going into its 12th year? Tell us what you think.

Dmoz has been brought back into the discussion as Google's Matt Cutts appeared in a new Google Webmaster Help Video answering the following user question:

Why is Google still taking notice of DMOZ? Many have alleged that the editors are corrupt. It's impossible to get them to list a site even if it is very relevant to a specific area.

"I know that people do have complaints about Dmoz, and we don't show it in our one-Google-sort of tabs at the top of the page like we used to in previous years, but in some countries, it can be very hard to type in queries. It can take a lot of time," says Cutts. "For example in something like Chinese or Japanese or Korean, sometimes it might be easier to browse by clicking, rather than typing in the query, and so especially in those sorts of countries, it can be very helpful to show Dmoz."

"But we don't use Dmoz in a lot of the ways that we used to. We don't show the Dmoz categories or the Open Directory categories beneath the snippet, and we used to do that," he adds. "We don't show it on the main page like we used to anymore. So if you're frustrated, you can always try a different category that you also think is relevant. You can always go to editors up the chain. But in general, if you can't get into Dmoz, I wouldn't necessarily worry about it. There are a lot of other great places to get links across the web."

Dmoz continues down the slope it's been on for quite some time in terms of unique visitors. Google not giving it as much play certainly must play at least some role in this. It does get over 18% of its referrals from Google:

Dmoz on its Own Future

Dmoz swears it still has plenty of life left in it, so if you believe the editorial department, there may be new opportunities from Dmoz down the road. In a post earlier this year, reflecting upon the last decade, Bob Keating, Dmoz editor-in-chief said, "Over the '00 decade, DMOZ has grown to be one of the most successful collaborative projects on the web. It has outlasted its commercial counterparts, and continues to be relevant in the search industry. The keys to its longevity and usefulness are its dedicated community, its open, collaborative editorial model, its non-commercial nature, and open data distribution channel."

"While DMOZ receives hundreds of editor applications, and lists thousands of websites each week, it needs a new Plan – a new blueprint for the future of how the web is organized, and how human organized data is consumed," he says. "Using traditional web directories as a means for information discovery is a thing of the past. However, the need for organized web-based content continues to grow exponentially. The future of DMOZ does not lie merely in improving its toolset, making it more SEO friendly, or convincing others of its collective brilliance. Its future lies in turning the entire thing on its head."

Keating went on to list some goals for this decade, including the development of an API for Dmoz data to allow editors and developers to write new apps using it. He also wants to transform Dmoz from a fixed-path directory to "the largest faceted system for organizing information on the web," have it become a "major influencer" for bringing the semantic web out of the lab/enterprise and into the entire web, and transforming Dmoz into a "suite of products with multiple levels of participation and engagement."

Things have been pretty quiet on the Dmoz front since then. The only updates on the Dmoz blog have been from editors talking about their experiences editing specific categories. Perhaps that is because some of the aforementioned goals are in the process of being realized behind the scenes.

Note: With a great deal of talk in the comments about corrruption, you may be interested in hearing from a former editor on the topic. Read here.

Will Dmoz Continue to Have a Place in Search?

Nearly a year ago, we looked at what Dmoz (aka: The Open Directory Project) was up to, and if it still had a place in search. The directory was talking about how it was looking for "a little respect" as it prepared to celebrate its 11th birthday (on June 5).

Has Dmoz earned any more of that respect going into its 12th year? Tell us what you think.

Dmoz has been brought back into the discussion as Google's Matt Cutts appeared in a new Google Webmaster Help Video answering the following user question:

Why is Google still taking notice of DMOZ? Many have alleged that the editors are corrupt. It's impossible to get them to list a site even if it is very relevant to a specific area.

"I know that people do have complaints about Dmoz, and we don't show it in our one-Google-sort of tabs at the top of the page like we used to in previous years, but in some countries, it can be very hard to type in queries. It can take a lot of time," says Cutts. "For example in something like Chinese or Japanese or Korean, sometimes it might be easier to browse by clicking, rather than typing in the query, and so especially in those sorts of countries, it can be very helpful to show Dmoz."

"But we don't use Dmoz in a lot of the ways that we used to. We don't show the Dmoz categories or the Open Directory categories beneath the snippet, and we used to do that," he adds. "We don't show it on the main page like we used to anymore. So if you're frustrated, you can always try a different category that you also think is relevant. You can always go to editors up the chain. But in general, if you can't get into Dmoz, I wouldn't necessarily worry about it. There are a lot of other great places to get links across the web."

Dmoz continues down the slope it's been on for quite some time in terms of unique visitors. Google not giving it as much play certainly must play at least some role in this. It does get over 18% of its referrals from Google:

Dmoz on its Own Future

Dmoz swears it still has plenty of life left in it, so if you believe the editorial department, there may be new opportunities from Dmoz down the road. In a post earlier this year, reflecting upon the last decade, Bob Keating, Dmoz editor-in-chief said, "Over the '00 decade, DMOZ has grown to be one of the most successful collaborative projects on the web. It has outlasted its commercial counterparts, and continues to be relevant in the search industry. The keys to its longevity and usefulness are its dedicated community, its open, collaborative editorial model, its non-commercial nature, and open data distribution channel."

"While DMOZ receives hundreds of editor applications, and lists thousands of websites each week, it needs a new Plan – a new blueprint for the future of how the web is organized, and how human organized data is consumed," he says. "Using traditional web directories as a means for information discovery is a thing of the past. However, the need for organized web-based content continues to grow exponentially. The future of DMOZ does not lie merely in improving its toolset, making it more SEO friendly, or convincing others of its collective brilliance. Its future lies in turning the entire thing on its head."

Keating went on to list some goals for this decade, including the development of an API for Dmoz data to allow editors and developers to write new apps using it. He also wants to transform Dmoz from a fixed-path directory to "the largest faceted system for organizing information on the web," have it become a "major influencer" for bringing the semantic web out of the lab/enterprise and into the entire web, and transforming Dmoz into a "suite of products with multiple levels of participation and engagement."

Things have been pretty quiet on the Dmoz front since then. The only updates on the Dmoz blog have been from editors talking about their experiences editing specific categories. Perhaps that is because some of the aforementioned goals are in the process of being realized behind the scenes.

Note: With a great deal of talk in the comments about corrruption, you may be interested in hearing from a former editor on the topic. Read here.