Last Week in Search: Google Changes Algorithm & Launches Music Store
Google Music Gets a Store and Connects With Google+
Google announced expansions to its Music service at its ‘These Go To 11′ event last week, opening up a music store to take on iTunes and Amazon for its slice of the online music pie. The Google Music store on the Android Marketplace boasts an 8 million-strong library of songs from Universal, Sony, EMI and a host of prominent independent labels, which although a far cry from iTunes’ 90 million strong library, is set to expand rapidly as negotiations with record industry bigwigs continue. Google Music is also set to go social with Google+ integration that lets you share music purchased from the Android Market to your Google+ circles for free. No word on an international launch date for Google Music yet, but we’ll keep you up to date on our newsletter as soon as its announced. Check out our full report on Google Music.
Google Announce New Algorithm Changes
Google took to its Inside Search blog last week to detail 10 recent changes to their search algorithm, ranging from changes to the way Google handles page titles all the way to Russian autocomplete improvements. While the post was certainly uncharacteristic of the usually secretive Google search team, Google’s makes hundreds of changes per-year and believes the ten changes listed aren’t susceptible to gaming by black hat SEO. The changes may affect your current SEO practices however so check out Jim’s video blog from last week below for a quick breakdown of the changes.
Gasp Never Dies
Leading media and marketing news site Mumbrella picked up on our Gasp comment-spam article last week and had a chat with Gasp’s retail business manager David McMann about the comments made. McMann denied knowledge of the comments, saying he would be disappointed if an employee had posted the comments because it goes against Gasp’s social media approach. You read that right. Gasp actually has a social media approach. Read our original article on Gasp’s comment spam and then head over to Mumbrella for the interview.
Google Launches Verbatim Search Tool
Are you sick of Google autocorrecting your spelling? Google launched a new ‘verbatim’ search tool last week that deactivates suggestions, personalised results and similar term inclusions to give searchers a “more deliberate way to tell Google to searchâ€. Verbatim search will search using the exact words you search without making any algorithm-based enhancements such as synonym (car would also search for automobile) and stem word inclusion (run would also search for running). If you’re forever signing out of your Google profile to ensure your search results aren’t personalised when checking your rankings then this one’s going to be a godsend. To access the verbatim search tool click on the ‘More search tools’ link at the bottom-left of Google’s SERPs side bar and once expanded, click on ‘Verbatim’.
Google+ Gets Trending Topics
Google+ has added trending topics to its long list of features, allowing users to see Google+ trends in real time. Trends can be filtered by content type or by posts from only your circles, allowing you to see what your circles are saying on a trending topic. While Google+’s trends are not filtered by location and have limited functionality when compared to Twitter’s trending topics, the potential for Google+ trending topics is huge when you consider that Google can combine trends across search, news and now social.
That’s it for Last Week in Search. Follow us on Twitter @StewArtMedia for more search news as it happens!
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
