July 2008, Week 2, Weekly Round Up of Important Search Engine Related Happenings

All that happened in the world of search engines in the second week of June 2008. Once again, the blogs are all in chronological order. Enjoy!

Google Again Tweaks AdWords Landing Page Quality Scores Algorithms- Confusion All Around!

Over at the Webmaster World, numerous reports have surfaced that Google has been hitting Webmasters hard in the Google AdWords Quality Scores for their landing page irregularities.

This penalization at Google's part can also be related to the post that I had put up last month about Google finally incorporating Landing Page load time as quality factor for Google AdWords quality scores.

Microsoft AdCenter Launches Quality-Based Ranking Update for U.K and Canada!

Via the AdCenter Blog, Microsoft has announced that, it has launched Quality-Based Ranking Update for the United Kingdom and Canada. It would mean that the publishers would now have to come up to a certain level pre-designated by Microsoft, to get their advertisements published in the "mainline" section, that is the place where the advertisements appear just above the search results. This new quality-based ranking system will determine the quality component via the advertiser's click-through rates and maximum bids.

Google Launches Strong Competition to Second Life. Google Lively is Here!

Google has announced via the Official Google Blog, the launch of Google Lively. It is a '3D Virtual World' where users are able to create avatars, their avatars’ rooms, customize their avatars with their own photos and videos via YouTube and embed their Lively virtual rooms into blogs and websites.

Google Preaches on Google Rankings!

In yet another Google revelation, over at the Official Google Blog, Amit Singhal, in-charge of Google ranking team has put up a post, that gives us a introduction to Google Rankings. Our readers may recall that, in May this year, I had put up a post introducing our readers to Google Search Quality.

Google ranking is a collection of algorithms used to find the most relevant documents for a user query.

Microsoft Live Search July 2008 Update! Here Comes Another One!

According to Webmaster World, there has been recent reports that indicate a major Microsoft Live Search update that constitutes the Microsoft 'Live Search July 2008 Update'. Just a couple of days ago, I had reported to our readers that there had been severe rankings fluctuations in Google due to the 'Google SERP changes for July 2008'. Now the irony of the situation was that, the Google SERP changes were running parallel to the Yahoo! 'June 2008 Search Index Update'.

Even, the Microsoft Live Search July 2008 Update is close on heels to the other two SERP updates from Google and Yahoo! that have the Webmasters on edge. Reports of unusual SERP activity and ranking fluctuations have been pouring in at Webmaster World.

Google AdWords Keywords Tool Finally Gets Approximate Search Counts!

Google has introduced the Approximate word counts in the Google AdWords keyword tool, with the color graphs, that until recently were the only indicators of the data in the keywords tool. When you perform a search on the keywords tool, you'll be presented with 'Approx Search Volume' and 'Approx Avg Search Volume' as data indicators along with the color graphs.

These are the news, reviews and events that have marked their impact on the Search Engine Industry this week. Sit tight for more news from this ever evolving domain. Have a great weekend!

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