Today I want to talk about Panda 4.1 and the Google leaked dos and don'ts. Recently, another algorithm named Penguin has been getting a lot of attention in Google. But I want to make sure that we don't forget about Panda.

Penguin is to SEO as kind of like Jason Voorhees, if you will. It's very scary, and it comes around every now and then and slices and dices websites. But Panda is more, in my opinion, kind of like Freddy Krueger. He's always kind of there in the background, in your nightmares, waiting to strike at any site, whether they think they're breaking the rules or not.

So I think it's very important to keep Panda in mind, even in the wake of Penguin craziness. Google has, in the past, three years ago, produced a set of very vague questions that are supposed to be intended to help websites deal with Panda.

After scouring the Internet for the last two or three years for every single reference of Panda I could find, from John Mueller, from Maile Ohye, from Pierre Far, from Gary Iles, all of the various Google employees that I could find, including the elite Quality Raters Guidelines. All the references from these materials coming directly from Google of any reference they made to a quality algorithm, any specific, actionable thing they said to do based on that quality algorithm.

What I did is I made a complete list, a complete do's and don'ts list. Now the complete list is on my website, which I'll share in a second. It takes me about an hour to go through the whole thing, so what I wanted to do for the wonderful Mozzers on Whiteboard Friday was to collect just kind of the top four dos and the top four don'ts and talk about those in a way that's more specific than the vague questions and I hope more helpful, but also short enough that I can condense into a Whiteboard Friday.

So I bet you're thinking to yourself, 'if you're going to tell me just to make good content, I'm going to hurl. I don't want anyone to hurl. Please don't hurl'. So I'm going to get to some specifics actually.

Here they are here. The collapsed do and don't list. The first section is the do list, and I've broken it down into four major dos that you should pay attention to for your website.

The first one is ensure task completion. Google's been talking a lot about task completion, more on the mobile side, but also on the desktop side as well. On my Panda list, when I scoured all the Google sources for this information, I found that they talk a lot about having to worry about your user metrics, what users are doing on your site, whether or not they're satisfied with your content, whether they're bouncing back to Google, or they're leaving your site to go directly to some other site.

So I boiled that all down to say ensure task completion. Whatever tasks that page is supposed to complete, you want to make sure it completes it. If it's a sign-up page, you want to make sure they sign up. Above the fold, you want to make sure it loads in the first three seconds and the main content is very clearly a sign-up page, if it's supposed to be a sign-up page. Or a download page, or if it's supposed to be information, if they wanted top five tips on X, Y, or Z, on Freddy Krueger, what are the five top best things about Freddy Krueger, it should say that above the fold so they can complete that task and Google can make sure they can track that they complete that task.

Of course, your analytics will tell you whether or not you're succeeding in that regard. If you see a lot of drop offs on that page, that could be a problem because those could be bounces back to Google.

Number two, you want to make sure you have various offsite references. So what kind of references am I talking about? I'm taking about any possible reference that you can get. Any way that Google can tell that this is a quality site, that people recommend this site, that's what you want. So you want people in the social world talking about you, sharing you, any of the major social networks, I don't care. Also, you want the experts in those particular social networks talking about you.

For example, if you are in SEO and if Rand Fishkin or other top SEOs are not talking about your content, that's a problem, because Google knows very well who the experts are, and they definitely will take into consideration if experts are talking about your content. At least, this is what I found on my list. For all the references again, you can go back to my list, which I'll mention out loud in a second.

Also, of course, you want links. Everyone knows you want links. But the links, of course, should be topical. If there is a forum in your industry or a blog in your industry or a magazine in your industry or a newspaper, anything like that in your industry, if they're not talking about you, that's a problem. You want to make sure they're talking about you, and, of course, it should be in a positive way. Hopefully, they're not talking about you in a negative way. That could be an issue.

Finally, you want to make sure you get reviews. The four star rating, nine out of ten blips, eight out of four blops, whatever it is, you want to make sure you get reviews, and they should be on independently verified sources, but also that Google can read, so Yelp, Zagat, and Google+. If you're not a local-based business, you still probably want some good reviews or references from the Better Business Bureau or Wikipedia or any kind of these other forums I talked about that are your industry specific. That is all telling Google that this site is a quality site.

Three, you want to make sure you have reputable business information on every page. This was something that was a little bit striking, that a lot of people don't know about. You want to make sure that you have on every page your address, your phone, and contact information. You want to make sure on your site you have a robust mission statement, a robust company directory. Not just a form with just kind of a standard WordPress form, where you click it and it might email somebody or it might not. You want to make sure that all the business information on your website, the phone number, the address are current and correct and that they can easily contact you and tell that you're a reputable business from any given page. That includes copyright information as well. You want to make sure your copyright is up to date on the site.

Finally, you want to make sure you cite your sources. Google is a company run by academics, and so it should be unsurprising to find that these academics want you to -- what did they tell you in college -- cite your sources. So if there are any big Wikipedia articles or any larger industry related websites that talk about your information, you should be giving a link out to those people. You should be citing your source and indicating to Google that you're an upstanding web citizen, or, at the very least, you know who the big dogs are in your industry and you're citing those sources when it is applicable.

HIGH QUALITY FACTORS (in no particular order):

1. Good usage metrics showing User Satisfaction with your content / presentation (Although outright denying using “analytics bounce rate”, JM has mentioned numerous times (inc. JM Dec 2, Zin&JM Dec 20, 2103. Also MO SMX West, Mar 11-13, 2014. Wyz, Jul 3, 2014. NEW:GI, SMX East, 2014) user satisfaction is DIRECTLY important and keeps implying it is directly tracked. Some anecdotal experiments have shown this as well, seroundtable “changed prices experiment”, Jul 2013. PAT support as well. Make sure the majority of visitors are completing the desired task on pages.)
2. Positive Social Shares / Mentions (JM, Dec 2, 2013. QRG, Mar 2014.)
3. Positive “Reviews” on an Independent Google Verifiable Source(JM Feb 24, 2014)
4. Authoritative Outlinks in Your Content / Citing Your Sources (JM June 20, 2014. QRG Mar 2014.)
5. .com, .net, and .org a quality/trust factor (MC, Sep 11, 2013)
6. Address and /or Contact Clearly Listed on Each page (QRG, Mar 2014)
7. Robust About Us info Inc. Mission Statement, Company Directory and other onsite signs of legitimate business (QRG, Mar 2014)
8. Robust Contact and/or Customer Service Information (QRG, Mar 2014)
9. A Very Positive Reputation On Blogs and Forums, etc. (QRG, Mar 2014)
   where exactly?
   1. “News articles, Wikipedia articles, blog posts, magazinearticles, forum discussions, and ratings from independent organizations can all be sources of reputation information…Yelp, Better Business Bureau... Amazon, and Google Product Search.”
10. Topical Experts Reference Your Site (On Web and Social) (QRG, Mar 2014) — So it is not just about the important topical PAGES that reference you positively, but also the important, topical, people who do, and the amount who do
11. Date Info on Every Page - “Last Updated”– kept current, including copyright (QRG, Mar 2014)
12. Clear Difference in Design Between Main Content And Supplemental Content (QRG, Mar 2014)
13. Long standing Domain name, Long Standing Public Domain Registration (QRG Mar 2014. EDIT: JM denied this being a ranking factor “as far as he knows”, Aug 25, 2014 - he may not know every little detail)

Now let's go to the don'ts. Now, if you go check my list, you'll see there are far more don'ts than there are dos, which I guess that's the state of the union as it is right now. But some of the most important don'ts I've listed here.

One, you want to make sure that you do not repeat keywords anywhere. This is important. You don't want to repeat keywords too much on page, and you don't want to repeat keywords too much across the site. You don't need ten pages about your pink shoes, blue shoes, green shoes. You don't need ten pages about the law you do in New York and Boston and Winnipeg and Toronto and Nunavut or wherever else you're doing law. This is definitely kind of a spammy signal for Google, and Google has mentioned this a million times in a bunch of different places, which I list.

Also you don't need to pepper your text with multiple keywords either, especially not to link it to other pages on your site just to try and make Google understand you're about that. Google already knows you're probably about that topic.

Tying directly to that, you don't want to make content just for SEO's sake. You see this quite a lot, that people think that they need to update their blog on a weekly basis, or they think that they have to have that freshness signal, and they will sacrifice quality of content for rapidity of publishing.

Again, that is something that Google had mentioned a bunch of times. This is low-quality content, and you don't need it. Rand has shared numerous posts, and Moz has shared numerous posts about it. If there's no one to amplify your content, then there's no point in doing so. If you're not going to publish content that people go "wow" about, then you don't need to publish it, and you can save that money.

Three, you don't want to forget your tie. What do I mean by that? What I mean is, when you go to a job interview, you don't want to forget your suit or forget your tie. The website is the exact same thing. You want to make sure you've crossed all the i's and dotted all the t's or crossed all the t's or dotted all the i's, or however it goes. You want to make sure that the spelling and grammar has been checked, that all the pages have been checked for errors, that there are no miscellaneous 500 errors, there are no naked Apache 404 errors. You want to make sure that, essentially, the website has been looked over and proofed. This is, as Google tells us, a direct signal that they're looking for in their quality algorithms. It makes sense because you don't want to see a site that has these kinds of errors on it.

Finally, the one that I'll share with you today, number four and this is another controversial one, is you do not want to interfere with the website usage with ads. So Google has been very clear in the Quality Raters Guidelines, in particular, and in a few other leaks from a few other Googlers, that you do not want to interrupt the user process of them going through your page by having a giant ad here and a giant ad here and a pop-up that comes up that they have to click away and then they're scrolling and reading down a little bit more, and then there's another ad that gets in the way. They have to scroll past that. This was directly mentioned in the Quality Raters Guidelines as a very blatant, low-quality site signal.

LOW QUALITY FACTORS (in no particular order):

1. Bad usage metrics showing possible User Dissatisfaction with your content / presentation (including speed, UI, whitespace (or lack thereof), too many options, bad/thin/poorly written content, didn’t answer their problem / question fast or good enough, etc.)(JM, Dec 2,20, 2013. Feb 14, 24, Jun 2, 2014. MO, SMX West, Mar 11-13, 2014. Wyz, Jul 3, 2014. PAT support as well. NEW: GI, SMX East, 2014) – ignore or deny this at your own risk
2. EDIT: Duplicate or Aggregate, “Tag”, or “Category” Content (MC, Sep 11, 2013. Zin, Dec 20, 2013. JM, Nov 4, 2013, Jun 2, Oct 10, 2014 re. Panda 4. QRG, Mar 2014). NOTE: The issue is not duplicate content per se, the issue is thin content that "users might notice", and keyword stuffing of the "tag" or "category" pages. And offsite dup content.
3. Duplicate Titles and Meta Description (MC Nov 18, 2013)
4. Aggressive “search phrase” keyword use onsite, INCLUDING: URL string, page content, AND HTML code like TITLE or ALT attributes (JM, Dec 2, 2013, Jun 6, Aug 11 2014. MC on Mar 13, 2014, SMX West. PAT re: URLs with "generic" words in them, e.g., "bestherbalpills.com")
5. EDIT: Keyword Stuffed Internal Links on Blog pages etc. (NOTE: this is both a problem with the number of keywords, and the ratio of links to text on the page -- Google has admitted both are signals for a "low quality" page in their eyes (JM, Dec 2, 2013, Aug 25, 2014. PAT)
6. Off-topic / Multi-Topic Links or Content Onsite (Aug 12 & Nov 18, 2013, Apr 7, 2014 all JM hangout) — eg.: can’t have a site on finance talk about cooking recipes in their blog
7. Clone sites are a strong panda factor (JM, Mar 10, 2014) — Don’t forget Google’s canonicalization algo will auto-301 sufficiently identical sites to a single site whether you want them to or not, SER, Feb 25, 2014.
8. Old or Outdated or Mistaken Facts/Info (QRG Mar 2014. JM Feb 14, 2014. New Scientist, Aug 22, 2014.)
9. Garbage text, single sentence pages, spun text, bad construction / spelling / grammar, Bad Search Results Pages, errors on page, etc. (QRG Mar 2014, MC, SMX Advanced, 2014, PED Mar 10, 2014. JM, Jun 6,20 2014)
10. Made for Ads site – where users quickly click on your 50%+ ads above the fold (QRG Mar 2014. JM Feb 24, Mar 24, 2014)
11. EDIT: NONUSEFUL 404, or excessive 500 level, or any PHP / MySQL errors (JM Feb 24, Oct 10, 2014. QRG Mar 2014. JM once again denied that excessive 404s are an issue, other than eating up your crawl budget, and not passing any link juice, and again, if your users notice -- this is not good)
12. Main Content (purpose of page) is below the fold (JM, May 26, 2014. QRG Mar 2014)
13. Excessive, Unmarked, Deceptive, Interstitial, In-between the Text Ads and Popups (QRG Mar 2014)
14. Bad Reputation on Independent Sites (like BBB, Wiki, Scamreport, etc.) (QRG Mar 2014. Also “Bad Merchant” algo, Mar 9, 2013. SEL)
15. Blocking Googlebot from Onsite CSS or JS Important for Design(JM June 2,16 2014. MO SMX Advanced, June 2014)
16. Supplemental / Sidebar Content Useless or Distracting (QRG Mar 2014)
17. Low Quality / Spammy / Duplicated / Auto-Generated User Generated Comments / Posts (QRG, Mar 2014. JM June 2,16 2014) —possible negative SEO exploit
18. EMD held to higher standards (Dec 2, 2013, JM. PAT re: URLs with "generic" words in them)
19. Longer EMDs are spam factor (MC, SMX West, Mar 13, Private Convo, 2014. PAT re: URLs with "generic" words in them)
20. Slow speed a demoting factor - especially over 20 seconds to download, OR if creates ANY user dissatisfaction (check other browsers and mobile devices too) (MC, SMX Advanced, June 2013)
21. Any Ecommerce or Health or Legal Related sites etc. (YMYL) held to higher standards to protect Users (QRG, Mar 2014) — This can include ANY site that advises on health, or financial matters, or sells to people including any service (law, plumbing, etc.) or any purchase (real estate, ecommerce, etc.)
22. Reading level is too low (for YMYL) – jilted, simple, obvious text(QRG, Mar 2014) example from QRG: “Pandas eat bamboo. Pandas eat a lot of bamboo. It’s the best food for a Panda bear.”
23. Broken Links / Images Don’t Load / Site is Not Maintained / Pages appear abandoned (QRG, Mar 2014)
24. ANY Affiliate or “monetized links” or “sneaky redirects” to affiliate sites (that are not nofollowed? or cloaked) (JM&PF Nov 18, 2013. QRG, Mar 2014)

Leverage Paid, Earned & Owned Media in Digital

Those in the marketing and agency world are privy to the buzzwords “paid,” “earned” and owned.” Traditionally, they stand for the different types of media and can be easily broken down like this:   

Paid is the age old idea of paying to place marketing messages around professional content, a 'go here now' message.

Owned Media may be a new concept, but brands have always had Owned assets such as stores and packaging. The importance of Owned has increased through the possibilities to create digital Owned media content, from websites to apps to social network profiles.

Earned, or word of mouth has been scaled through social media possibilities across blogs, Facebook, forums, YouTube and so forth that now offer anyone the ability to create, comment, link to or share.

The key to Paid Owned Earned though is understanding the way that the three different areas work together and integrated planning / execution across these three different elements can deliver enhanced marketing effectiveness.

The Social Challenge

The conversations on Twitter and Facebook never stop — it’s 24/7/365. A brand can’t buy an ad and then call it quits — it has to continue the conversation, engage consumers and really earn that earned media.

Blasting consumers with banner ads and product placement isn’t enough. With social media, marketing has become more of a pull medium than a push — the audience is active and engaged, transforming marketing into a two-way street. It’s been a curveball for the industry, and agencies have had to restructure and rethink their approach to media to account for the impact of social media.

Paid, earned and owned — as terms — don’t mean as much. To explain why, look at a branded YouTube channel and explains why it could be classified as any of the three buckets:

§  Paid. It can cost ~$100,000 a year to manage.

§  Owned. It’s an exclusively owned URL (much like a website) and the brand has complete control of what is posted.

§  Earned. It’s “squarely social.” A YouTube channel will succeed only if consumers watch and share the videos they see. A brand needs to earn those eyeballs with creative execution of content.

And even a Facebook Page, which is free and “owned,” costs a pretty penny when you consider the fees of hiring an agency and social media specialist to manage the Page and produce content.

And at the end of the day, do consumers care about these buckets? Do they see the paid, earned and owned lines drawn when they’re watching a commercial or tweeting about their favorite brand? No.

Consumers don’t draw those lines, we do,

How Paid, Earned and Owned Play Together

Getting your agency to work outside its comfort zone

Having spent the past several months researching paid, owned, and earned integration, some patterns have become clear. More than any other constituency (brands or software providers), agencies recognize the importance of integrating these three media channels for marketing effectiveness.

Yet agency revenue models, particularly media agency models, are potentially threatened by integrating paid, owned, and earned media. Why would they want to emphasize a channel that is not their area of specialization? This takes them out of the campaign driver's seat. Moreover, it requires them to collaborate with social media, PR, and other ecosystem players.

Incentivize collaboration

Varying agencies and vendors don't only have revenue models embedded in different media channels, but they also compete with one another for budgets and campaigns. The brands' role is to mediate these often clashing interests by bringing all parties to the same table, aligning them around the same KPIs, and by establishing systems that encourage cooperation rather than competition.

Empower the connectors

Large agencies and holding companies are deeply invested in social media, PR, listening, and other earned and owned media practices. They, more than any other constituency, see the need to commingle paid, owned, and earned media. Yet anyone who's been through an acquisition will tell you that buying is one thing while integrating is quite another. Therefore, a critical task for the client is to find the leaders at the agency who have both the power and the skills to jump-start cross-divisional cooperation and empower them to do so with deep campaign responsibilities.

Ensure the agency understands tools, data, and metrics

Tools are rapidly proliferating in all forms of digital media, from ad serving and optimization to content production and dissemination to social media management -- and then there's the measuring and analyzing of all that data. Agencies are positioned to stay on top of the continual developments in tools and software, as well as maintain staff that are highly trained in deploying technological solutions. Uniting and unifying creative, data, distribution, optimization, and insights are hard enough within a single media channel -- much less across all of paid, owned, and earned. Understanding what tools to use and how to use them is a critical component of media convergence. Right now, agencies are best positioned in this area.

 Measuring the Value of Media

A media agency is driven by an objective — it needs to compel consumers to do something, whether it’s paying attention to a new product, buying something or going to a store. Just because the medium is Twitter instead of TV doesn’t mean much — media is media. What’s become most important to the agency is how successful the campaign was at accomplishing the goals.

As more consumers get on board with social media, generating earned media through social shares will become an even higher priority. And that means paid and owned media — and the teams that manage each — will need to work together even more seamlessly. The barriers of the silos are broken, and they’re only going to crumble more.

Growth of Mobile Search & SEO

Google’s Eric Schmidt recently noted that mobile search is growing much faster than desktop search. As mobile increasingly becomes a primary gateway to the Internet, it is crucial for companies to incorporate forward-thinking SEO practices into their mobile strategies to ensure their mobile sites are easily detected by search engines and found by consumers.

The amount spent on mobile advertisement is estimated to grow $19 billion by 2015 and 49% of mobile users in the US have already used their devices to buy online in the last six months. Mobile commerce is expected to reach $119 billion in sales by 2015. Mobile search is on the top list of the online shoppers. Mobile SEO plays an important role in the success of your business. It is going to be the next ‘big thing’ for the ecommerce.

You can’t build an effective online marketing presence without nuts and bolts of SEO. For instance keywords, quality links and rich content. The next generation of online shoppers is no longer tethered to a desktop or laptop, success of business will depend on mobile SEO. Handheld devices need to deliver best results possible thus usability becomes a paramount concern.

For new mobile marketing strategy, application becomes the centerpiece. To be successful, you need to provide user friendly mobile applications. There are lots of tactics and techniques available to accomplish that but making an attractive application and taking it to the application store is not enough. Metrics will provide you the data that helps in making your store popular and profitable.

Keep your mobile website focused. App stores rank a website/application on the basis of keyword searches, applying algorithms that relate to popularity and keyword relevancy. With the explosive growth of the smartphones and Android ecosystems there is ample number of opportunities for mobile websites and apps. It still has relatively simple algorithms and lower competition.

More than 60% of consumers search for brands from mobile devices before purchasing, and another 49% of mobile searchers made a mobile purchase in the past six months. Businesses must view mobile as a significant piece of their overall marketing campaigns that can drive substantial traffic and increase revenue.

Here are some high level SEO strategies that brands can implement into their overall mobile efforts to ensure they are getting maximum visibility.

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1. Develop a Device Agnostic Approach

Search engines incorporate various criteria in mobile browsers to determine page rank. These factors include overall site performance, usability, download speed and screen rendering. A fully optimized mobile site that extends all functionality and key content from a website will rank higher in search results than a website that has simply been reformatted for a smaller screen.

For example, simply transcoding a webpage through the use of a cookie-cutter template will strip it of key content, leading to incomplete pages and decreased overall usability. Difficult navigation and broken pages will result in a lower page rank and a negative user experience that discourages repeat visits.

The type of devices that consumers use to search the mobile web also factors into site ranking. Different mobile web browsers render pages in different ways, which is why it is essential for brands to develop a device agnostic mobile strategy that supports the wide variety of available mobile operating systems.

For example, Staples’ mobile site was developed to support all web-enabled devices. To decrease bounce rate (when a user views only one page on a site, but then leaves), brands’ mobile sites must automatically recognize the consumer’s device as it loads, and render the page accordingly to ensure a view that is best optimized for the user’s particular screen.

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2. Leverage Traditional SEO Practices on a New Platform

Brands will ensure that their site stands out in a crowded market by translating traditional web SEO practices to mobile. Common SEO tactics that should be incorporated into all mobile sites include:

§  Appropriate Keywords in Headlines and Text: Consumers use mobile for more focused and task-oriented searches (i.e. for a specific location or product). This is different from how most people search from a desktop computer. By understanding consumer behavior, brands can anticipate queries and incorporate key search terms into page text, increasing detection from search engines.

§  Relevant Page Titles and Accurate Page Descriptions: Page titles are one of the first factors mobile browsers use to determine where a page will show in results. Similar to traditional SEO, it is important that these titles reflect the terms that people use to search, increasing the likelihood that the site will appear relevant and receive better page rankings.

§  Outbound Links: Despite less real estate associated with mobile screens, incorporating outbound links to relevant sources provides a more complete user experience and associates the mobile site with other trusted brands.

§  Standard Coding: The wide variety of operating systems supported by mobile makes it extremely important for brands to follow valid HTML coding. Browsers parse through HTML code to determine search relevance. Any errors or invalid coding will result in broken pages and a lower ranking. Sites built in accordance to standards will ensure a consistent experience across all devices. 

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The Future of Mobile Search

The rapid consumer adoption rate of smartphones, coupled with increasing advancements in mobile technology, means that mobile SEO is a powerful tool to move the needle on mobile traffic. Next-generation coding languages like HTML5 can be incorporated into mobile SEO practices to enhance a mobile site’s usability and performance, resulting in higher page rankings in search engines.

Advancements in location-based search results and integrated real-time social search results will further impact how consumers use mobile search and how browsers position results. In order to increase traffic to mobile pages and drive revenue, it is essential for brands to think strategically about how to leverage common mobile SEO practices in order to increase brand loyalty and maximize traffic.

Google Gives Search a Refresh

Google Refresh for Search Queries

Google Inc. is giving its tried-and-true Web-search formula a makeover as it tries to fix the shortcomings of today's technology and maintain its dominant market share.

Over the next few months, Google's search engine will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links. It will also present more facts and direct answers to queries at the top of the search-results page.

The changes to search are among the biggest in the company's history and could affect millions of websites that rely on Google's current page-ranking results. At the same time, they could give Google more ways to serve up advertisements.

Google isn't replacing its current keyword-search system, which determines the importance of a website based on the words it contains, how often other sites link to it, and dozens of other measures. Rather, the company is aiming to provide more relevant results by incorporating technology called "semantic search," which refers to the process of understanding the actual meaning of words.

Amit Singhal, a top Google search executive, said in a recent interview that the search engine will better match search queries with a database containing hundreds of millions of "entities"—people, places and things—which the company has quietly amassed in the past two years. Semantic search can help associate different words with one another, such as a company (Google) with its founders ( Larry Page and Sergey Brin).

Powering up the Search Engine

Google is adding semantic technology to its keyword search system.

Keyword Search

• Determines the importance of websites based on the words it contains, links to those sites and dozens of other measures.
• Also factors in the person searching, such as his location and the time of day.

Semantic Search

• Refers to the process of understanding the actual meaning of words.
• Can differentiate between words with more than one meaning, such as the car brand 'Jaguar' and the animal 'jaguar.'

Google search will look more like "how humans understand the world," Mr. Singhal said, noting that for many searches today, "we cross our fingers and hope there's a Web page out there with the answer." Some major changes will show up in the coming months, people familiar with the initiative said, but Mr. Singhal said Google is undergoing a years-long process to enter the "next generation of search."

Under the shift, people who search for "Lake Tahoe" will see key "attributes" that the search engine knows about the lake, such as its location, altitude, average temperature or salt content. In contrast, those who search for "Lake Tahoe" today would get only links to the lake's visitor bureau website, its dedicated page on Wikipedia.com, and a link to a relevant map.

For a more complex question such as, "What are the 10 largest lakes in California?" Google might provide the answer instead of just links to other sites.

To provide answers that aren't already in Google's ever-expanding database, the company will blend new semantic-search technology with its current system to better recognize the value of information on websites and figure out which ones to show in search results. It would do so by examining a Web page and identifying information about specific entities referenced on it, rather than only look for keywords.

The coming shift has major implications for Google, which dominates the Internet search market with around 66% market share and more than 75% of all search-ad revenue. The Mountain View, Calif., company has succeeded because of the strength and ease of its keyword-search technology, which in turn fueled Google's search ads, which appear next to search results. That business now generates the majority of Google's $37 billion in annual revenue.

Some semantic-search experts also believe the move will help Google to keep up with Facebook Inc., the social network that also has amassed a database about hundreds of millions of people, places and things but hasn't offered a robust search service.

Google also hopes the change to semantic search will entice some people to stay longer on the search site, said people briefed on the plans, amid competition with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter Inc. that are claiming more Internet users' time.

For instance, people who search for a particular novelist like Ernest Hemingway could, under the new system, find a list of the author's books they could browse through and information pages about other related authors or books, according to people familiar with the company's plans. Presumably Google could suggest books to buy, too.

It's also unclear exactly how Google's search ads—which appear next to search results and are handled by separate teams inside the company—would change in response to the overhaul. But people briefed on the initiative said that if the search engine better understands the meaning or intent behind people's search queries, Google could find a way to show them more relevant ads.

As people spend more time on Google's search site looking through its extensive "entity" database, there would also be more pages, or inventory, on which to place ads, said a person with knowledge of the initiative.

Google's advertising executives have knowledge of the initiative and have considered ways to capitalize on it, said a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Singhal said his team is working independently of any advertising considerations.

Google has previously updated its core Web search technology. Most recently, it began tailoring search results to individual users based on their activity on Google+, the company's social network, and it is now instantly showing search results before a person has finished typing their search query. Google also can scan thousands of sites and give a "best guess" answer for limited sets of questions, such as, "Who is the chancellor of Germany?"

Google also currently has some other semantic-search elements, such as the ability to assess what the web collectively thinks are the most significant items associated with certain keywords. For example, a search for "30 Rock," the name of a popular TV series, will bring up a section called "Actor searches for 30 Rock" at the bottom of the search-results page. There, people can find a photo of each actor and a link to execute a new Google search for that name.

But the newest change is expected to go much further, coming as a result of Google's acquisition in 2010 start-up Metaweb Technologies, which had an index of 12 million entities, such as movies, books, companies and celebrities. By comparison, online encyclopedia Wikipedia has 3.5 million English entries, though they include more detailed information.

New and Updated SEO Tools for 2011

Here's a roundup of various new or updated tools from around the web.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Microsoft has unleashed a substantially improved Bing Webmaster Tools. Among other highlights in the litany of new features are: the ability to tell the Bing crawler to slow down indexing during specific hours; an all-new Index Explorer tool that lets you see a more up-to-date version of Bing's indexing details, improved performance of the tool, and more extensive data; and the ability to give access (in read-only, read-write, or admin access levels) to other users.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools, which provides SEO and Social Media tools, has integrated the Google Webmaster Tools API, allowing users to access a wide variety of additional resources. This includes adding and verifying sites, updating preferred domain settings, viewing related keywords (and adding them directly to the Raven Tools Keyword Manager)

, viewing GWT messages and crawling issues, and viewing/adding sitemaps.

SEO for Firefox

This trusted tool from SEO Book has been updated for compatibility with Firefox 4, improved speed, increased compatibility with the "new Google search result format" (presumably social search elements), and some bug fixes.

New Tools Worth Using:

The Google +1 Button

Google has taken to the SERPs to combat Bing's partnership with Facebook and the intergation of Facebook likes with search results. This "like"-like button can be added to websites by webmasters, and the full Google experiment allows anyone with a Google account to +1 a page directly from the SERP. Beyond promoting the site to a top position when an individual in the searcher's contact network has previously +1'd a page, Google has confirmed that +1s are a ranking factor.

SEOMoz SERP Analysis Tool

The long-awaited SERPs Analysis Tool has been released. While it's supposedly still in "early form" (lacking some UI features and data that they're planning to implement in the coming weeks), it's still one of the most thorough tools around. The tool analyzes the results for the sites that pull on the SERP for any given keyword search, with evaluated metrics including numerous factors in the following categories: URL link metrics, on-page optimization, domain name-keyword match, URL anchor text metrics, and domain-wide link metrics.