Yahoo has officially announced that the redesign of their search results display that has been in testing mode for the past two weeks has gone live.
The new design boasts a faster load time, search results higher up on the page, a new navigation bar at the top, and a more consistent look with the Yahoo homepage. Yahoo also promises to roll out the top bar you see on the home page and on the search results page throughout more and more Yahoo properties going forward.
Penguin 2.0 Update Happened around May 15th.
Google Penguin 2.0 occurred around May 15th, and seemed to affect more sites than previous Google Penguin Updates. Feedback from Webmaster Forums supports that more sites have been hit with penalties, although the feedback is that Google is sending notices to webmasters through webmaster tools notifying them of potential penalties. This is not good news in general, as the consensus of surveys of webmasters show that only about 10% of sites have fully recovered from the first Google Penguin updates, one year later.
Google “Softens” Panda Algorithm
According to Matt Cutts, Google is changing the Google Panda Algorithm to look at some other website factors to determine if a site is a quality and relevant resource. The exact quote from Cutts is below:
“We are looking at Panda and seeing if we can find some additional signals, and we think we’ve got some to help refine things for sites that are kind of in the border zone, the gray area a little bit, And so if we can soften the affect a little bit, for those sites, that we believe have got some additional signals of quality, that will help sites that were previously affected – to some degree”
This falls well short of a repeal for those whose rankings have been affected by Google Panda. Content remains King.
Bottom Line: If it is possible, Local SEO Services is about to become even more complicated. Link Strategies will be different, and content relevance remains important. Hint: Social Media is a great medium to provide useful information, disseminate valuable information, and ultimately, drive traffic to your site. Social media will not be all about the ROI of Facebook Ads, but more about creating relevance for your website through original and compelling content that will be shared by website users.