In a fresh upgrade involving punctuation marks, Google has updated its search results. So, now when you search for a “;” as in semicolon, you will now get search results. While some of the results are relevant, some may be not (the search for “/” slash reveals a music band with the same name on top). Here is what the search for “!” reveals:
If you are a surfer , then Google’s new move will do good for you. For webmasters, it means of lot of damage control. Google has brought in a new change titled the- ‘Page layout algorithm’ which is designed to penalize sites with pages that are top-heavy with ads.
Google has provided programmatic access to the search queries data in Webmaster Tools with ‘Python’. The Python script for downloading search query data was brought by Google in December 2011 and now has new download options that make the data download highly more useful.
Wordstream has put together an insightful infographic showing how Google earned a substantial $37.9 Billion in 2011 Advertising Revenues. The research was done by WordStream independently and is a follow up of the Google’s announcement of a “disappointing” 2011 Earnings.
![What Industries Contributed to Google's Billion in Revenues? [INFOGRAPHIC]](http://www.wordstream.com/images/google-earnings.png)
What do you think of Google’s fortunes in 2011, so share your opinion?
Google has joined Wikipedia and other sites in the protest against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) being debated in Congress. Google has a link on its home page leading people to sign up in the protest against SOPA and PIPA. The link also notifies users of Google's opposition to controversial antipiracy bills before the Congress.
Google yesterday added a new dimension to its existing search engine by introducing, Search plus Your World. This feature will integrate personal results, mainly from Google+, into SERPs. This essentially means that information like People, Pages and Profiles will now be seen on the result pages. Lets have a closer look at the features :
Personal Results from Google+ Available in SERPs:
According to a sensational investigative report, British Broadcasting Company(BBC) claims that Google is in hot water again. BBC has blamed Google.co.uk for running ads for illegal Olympic ticket resellers, ads for cannabis and ads for fake UK passports and identification cards. According to published BBC report, these ads were stopped by Google as soon as they were brought to company's attention, but that has not stopped Google from keeping the revenue they generated through these illegal ads.
Google has made quite a few improvements to search in the month of December 2011, and they brought out a latest monthly recap about these search tweaks. The most interesting takeaway of the entire line up of 30 odd improvements is the project codenamed “Megasitelinks,” by Google.
In news that has the entire search industry gripped, Google has penalized its own Chrome browser in the search results. Google has levied a penalty against the browser as result of which Chrome has lost its position in SERP. The 60 day penalty has taken effect and Chrome is not ranking for keywords like- ‘Chrome, Chrome browser or even internet browser’.
Google’s Matt Cutts often posts insightful videos for webmasters. He has recently posted one about the options in Google Webmaster Tools to geo-locate or geo-target for multiple locations. The video is a must watch for webmasters with a site that targets different locations:
You can also check my recent presentation on Global SEO Strategies I did at SEMPO, Chennai
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