In its first big renovation of the year 2011, search engine behemoth Google has ramped up the challenge for black hat SEO experts with a tweak in its search algorithm to keep out low quality content.
Over the years, Google has emerged as the gold standard of Internet search due to the constant improvements and innovations it dishes out in a timely manner.
The Internet giant has continuously fine tuned its search process to provide quality content innumerable times in the past. Some of the recent steps taken to optimize the internet search experience in the previous year are recalled in the slideshow, starting from the recent and this year's first change in the search formula:
Weeks after accusing rival search engine, Microsoft's Bing of copying its search results; Google revamped its search formula in a bid to weed out the drivel and penalize content farms."Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time," said Google on its latest tweak.The search engine that has been increasingly facing flak over the declining quality of search results in the recent times.Elaborating on the "pretty big algorithmic improvement", the company said in an official blog, "This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."Google informed that the improvement will affect rankings for many sites: high quality websites will rise while sites with low quality content will fall.Google's move that points at a tacit admission that web publishers are flooding its search engine with low-quality pages comes in response to recent complaints from the users on the frustrating trend of websites, dubbed content farms, making their way up on the search results by churning out insubstantial content based on search trends.ReutersIn September 2010, a new search enhancement called Google Instant.Pushing the speed of search results, Google Instant shows results even as the user types."Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type," Google said announcing Instant, promising faster searches, smarter predictions and instant results.ReutersIn November 2010, Google unveiled Instant Previews to enable users quickly compare results, pinpoint relevant content and interact with the results page.With the launch of Instant Previews, a magnifying glass appeared at the end of the search result link. Clicking on the glass will allow users to instantly see a preview of the web page.After activating Instant Previews with that one click, you can hover over any other search result to see a preview of the web page, Google explained.REUTERSThe Google logo is seen on a door at the company's office in Tel Aviv January 26, 2011.REUTERSGoogle is launching Google+ a new social networking service.REUTERS
