In case you have not noticed, today Google has changed the look and feel of its website.  the homepage buttons have a new, sleek feel to them.  The search box has  a shadowing effect now.  Even the top navigation options appear after the page has loaded.  This is to increase site speed, something that will soon play a huge part in the Google search engine algorithm.

Also the search result page changes its look and feel.  There are new options on the right side navigation that may seem new to most users, but in reality are just moved from the top header into the right column.  This is to make them more prevalent and easy to use for the users.  It looks like Google is trying to change its look to resemble that of Bing’s search results.   It should be interesting to see how the changes play out for Google and if they make any new changes.

From the look of things, I suspect that Google will continue to push out changes and updates to the search engine results page, until they have the perfect mix of organic results and paid listings. Why gice up so much room and condense the search results?  This only means less advertising space or less organic search results.  Most likely it will be the latter.  Lets just wait and see what the future has in store for searchers.

It has taken quite a while, but finally the two search giants, Yahoo and Microsoft are partnering together in hopes of creating a mega search engine superior to that of the current market leader, Google. This is a 10 year deal in which Microsoft will have access to Yahoo search technologies, to integrate into their current search engine. The companies will use Bing as the main search engine algorithm to display search results. The paid advertising will also be merged, yet the companies will remain separate entities.

Now that the deal is done, here’s what Steve Ballmer has to say about the impact of it, “Through this agreement with Yahoo!, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” said Ballmer. “Success in search requires both innovation and scale. With our new Bing search platform, we’ve created breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.”

Microsoft will compensate Yahoo by offering a revenue sharing agreement. This is a tricky deal that may cause some havoc to the Google team. Yahoo and Microsoft believe that this partnership will bring in an additional $275 million dollars to each company.

Microsoft has recently released its brand new search engine in hopes f competing with the monster, Google. There has been major TV advertising and marketing in place to get people interested, but will it be enough? Currently there is the new screen interface that is not as simple as Google, but not as cluttered as Yahoo. Bing will be a hybrid of the two dominant search engines in hopes of obtaining a large market share.

There are tons of informative articles on the web about SEO and Microsoft’s new decision, not search, engine.

Everyone wants to have top rankings on the for big search engines; Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. This is obtainable, but requires a lot of work and effort to ensure that every aspect of all the different algorithms are met. Since the algorithms are kept top secret, this makes for a difficult process.

One of the most frequently asked questions readers and clients ask, revolves around how websites can be best optimized to meet the algorithmic needs of each of the major 4 search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask jeeves. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Though there have been wide sweeping changes in the organic search engine landscape over the past six months, the fundamental ways search engines operate remains the same.

UPDATE: Big three sounds more like it! In 2009 the major search engines are Yahoo, Google, and soon to be Bing. Each has similar algorithms and ranking systems, with slight variations. For example Google looks at content and links, whereas Bing looks more at the links not the content. Having a set strategy for ranking in each search engine is the best way to go about your internet marketing endeavors.