After a couple of months of collecting feedback Google have now closed the developer preview version of the Caffeine algorithm update.

Matt Cutts stated that they have received very positive feedback during the test period and will now be rolling out the Caffeine update in one of their data centers. Cutts stated that the algorithm will be rolled out after in the chosen data center after the thanksgiving holidays in the US.

When asked about integrating the update into UK based search results Cutts stated:

I don’t think you’ll see Caffeine on multiple data centers before January

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It’s what the SEO community are all talking about but the thing that no one’s really optimising for. It’s the Bing-Yahoo deal. Is anyone optimising for it at all? The question is perhaps even more pertinent now, as there seems to be some kind of hiccup regarding the progression of the deal. It seems Yahoo and Bing haven’t quite agreed how they’re going to split the vast profits they’re sure to make. There must be some stressed people in those companies; I hope they have health insurance.

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On the 7th of October Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt gave a press conference in New York, where he said the recession in the advertising industry had leveled off, suggesting that the green shoots of recovery are ready to sprout in the United states and European search markets.

The company has continued to develop and introduce a great deal of new web applications over these challenging times, but Eric said that search accounted for the vast majority of the company’s revenue – at around 90%.

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From the first half of next year anyone with a web browser will be able to take advantage of Google’s new e-book service, Google Editions. The controversial advance into the world of book reselling has got plenty of backs up in the publishing industry – everyone takes notice when a company the size of Google moves into its territory.

Google has, however, been careful to give a handsome percentage to publishers – standing at 63 percent, while Google will pocket the remaining 37. What does this mean for the publishing industry? Does it mean lower prices for consumers, or does it mean the same prices but with more money going to Google and the publishing houses? The only people who will be truly saddened by this are those people who work in the printing industry.

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It is true to say that all search engines require the same things, to a certain degree. A website that performs well for Google will do well for Bing. But there are a few distinct differences that most SEO specialists agree exist.

One of the main ones is the importance that Bing places on the URL. It is thought that if a search term appears in a given URL, that site will rank better for it. Another major thought is that the longer the site has been around for, the better it will rank. These factors are true of Google too, but less so.

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Search engine results may retrieve results that could be too explicit for children, even if you type in a key term that is deemed innocent. Words like ‘Essex’ may return sites about Essex, but because it contains the word ’sex’ as well, this may return some not so appropriate sites suitable for adults only. This is exactly the kind of problem most parents with young children and Muslims face on a daily basis when using the internet.

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Well, yet another new thing to do on the internet is upon us. It’s called FriendFeed. But what’s it for?

You may well have seen the brand name in the news recently, as it has been bought by the owners of Facebook for 15 million dollars in cash as well as an estimated 32 million dollars worth of Facebook shares. It must be pretty good then right?

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Search engine giants Google are on the verge of a major update to their search algorithm. Codenamed Caffeine, Google will attempt to put search engines such as Bing back into the shadows.

The upgraded version of the search engine, currently still in the pre-beta test phase, is a major release from the search engine giants which, according to Google, is said to be the:

first step in improving the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of search results

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For a while now various SEO companies and Webmasters have been reporting that corporate brands seem to getting a push in search results, favouring a bigger trusted brand over smaller less well-known organisations.

In March 2009 Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, explained the latest update ‘Vince’ (named after a Googler called Vince who created this modification) could help to improving search ranking for larger named brands and websites with a higher authority within search.

Matt Cutts addressed these concerns stating that the latest changes in search results do not necessarily constitute an ‘update’ rather ‘minor changes’ within Google’s algorithm factoring more trust into for big brand names and generic search queries.

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According to recent figures from Hitwise, the largest internet traffic monitor, Bing has yet to out perform Google. After rebranding their search engine, Microsofts ‘decision engine’ Bing was set to produce some interesting results if it was to compete with Yahoo and industry giants Google.

Hitwise recently released the first month-on-month statistics detailing the percentage of US based searches via each search engine, and needless to say Google was by far the leader taking 74.04% of searches in June 2009. Yahoo was in, a not very close, second place with 16.19%, followed by Bing taking a mere 5.25%.

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