There’s a very interesting post on the official Google Blog today talking about the future of search and how Google is approaching it. It starts with Larry Page’s definition of the perfect search engine: “one that understands exactly what you mean and gives you exactly what you want.” It pretty much sums it up huh?
Here’s a quote from the article:
Google announced last week that it will start penalizing websites that violate copyrights on a consistent basis. In other words, if a certain website is found to be violating copyrights of other people regularly it will lose search rankings and possibly even be removed from Google’s index.
Google has been testing its Trusted Stores seal program since October of 2011, and now the program is opening up to all U.S. merchants with a self-service sign-up interface. Merchants who participate will have a “Trusted Stores” badge — which opens to provide information about the company’s shipping and customer service record — appear beside their AdWords ads. The badge won’t be a ranking signal.
Google is testing the effect of adding “Trusted Stores” badges to qualifying advertisers’ search ads, as it considers deploying the badges more widely. The experiment was first reported by Internet Retailer. A Google spokesperson, asked to comment on the test, sent a statement that said: “As part of the Google Trusted Stores program, we’re currently conducting a test with a small set of advertisers to help users identify online merchants that offer a great shopping experience. In our ongoing efforts to provide ads that are useful and relevant for users, we’re experimenting with different ways to communicate information about the quality of the shopping experience for a particular advertiser in the search ad itself.”
Google’s latest batch of search quality updates is online, and offers some insight into a variety of search- and SEO-related topics. Though some of Google’s monthly updates have included more than 50 items, this one comes in at 39. But it looks like there’s still plenty to digest. Here’s a look at what stands out for me after a first read of Google’s blog post.