SEO Blog

Google will modify the way it computes top search queries in the SEO reports of Google Webmaster Tools (now also available in Google Analytics).

Google now shows first positions 

The change concerns the feature named “Top Queries” accessible via “Search Queries” in the section “Your site on the Web”.

Users will see rankings in search results data differently.

Previously, Google displayed the average position of all links to your website. Now, you will see the average of all the first positions.

As expected, China Internet population surpassed 500 million in 2011.

According to the latest report published by CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), the country had a population of 513 million Internet users as of December 2011.

The total population of Chinese netizens increased by 56 million in 2011 (+11% year over year). Indeed, China Internet population surpassed 450 million in 2010.

As you know, we manage a lot of campaigns in many different languages. Therefore, we wanted to conduct a study of quality scores to determine how to decrease the cost of acquisitions for our clients. We already knew that price is part of the adwords algorithm. However, what we didn’t know was that it had such a huge impact on the quality score.

Is Baidu following Google’s path in terms of social search results?

A good question to ask to their staff as China’s leading search engine has recently been testing a new social feature that clearly reminds me of Google +1 feature and follows Google's announcement about search results getting more personalized.

Google recently unveiled a new social search feature named “Search Plus Your World” that brings new search results from Google+ and Picasa.

Google Search Plus Your World

If you’re in the US, and when you search on Google.com in English, you can now access 2 kinds of results: either classic links from the whole web or links coming from your Google social network (Google+) and photo sharing service (Picasa).

An SEO specialist named Aaron Wall from SEOBook wrote a very interesting article explaining that Google has paid sponsored links to better rank its Chrome web browser download page.

However, as you may know, those techniques are actually reprehensible by the search company itself.

Indeed, according to Aaron, the request This post is sponsored by Google in English makes more than 400 pages containing sponsored posts by Google, and a do follow to the download page of Chrome.

Baidu, China’s leading search engine, recently unveiled a new feature that enables users to check travel information directly from the search engine box.

Check Your Flight Status on Baidu

With this new feature, users can get real-time flight information such as time and location of departure, layover and arrival. 

A study released in September 2011 and led by True Action Network shows Click-Through-Rates (CTR) for every ranking position of Google's Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

From an SEO point of view, what do we learn? 1st ranking position (what I call pole position) isn't as attractive as before!

Everyone agrees to say that having your website ranked on the 1st page of Google search results is extremely important as it gives you visibility, as well as drives traffic to your website.

Here comes year 2012, and the time to look back at 2011 in order to check the most popular articles of our blog. In case you didn’t read all of our blog posts, here is a recap of our 12 most read SEO blog posts in 2011:

1. SEO for Baidu