Google is currently being looked at by the Federal Trade Commission in Antitrust hearings in Washington. Several company executives, including Eric Schmidt from Google and Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, have testified, giving differing opinions, as both companies have a lot at stake in the hearings. Yelp has been battling Google regarding local reviews for a good part of the last 7 years. They claim that Google is giving emphasis to their own products, particularly their Google Places listings which also contain reviews for local small businesses. Yelp is claiming that this product, which previously contained data from Yelp’s web site but no longer does, gives Google an unfair advantage.

Google relies on a massive algorithm to organize their search results, and they maintain that this algorithm does not bias results toward Google products. They want to provide the best results possible to users, and claim that the minute they stop doing that, users will find someone else that will. It is that sense of urgency that Google utilizes to strive to be the best. The company’s search algorithm is under almost constant change, with upwards of 500 updates made last year. Some of those were small, while others were quite large like their “Panda” update in March. All of these are designed to continually improve search results for users.

The outcome of this trial will be closely followed by all of us in the SEO community; and even closer by those who compete directly with Google services. The outcome could have a major impact on how search results are displayed on the first page of Google if Google is forced to change how or where they display Google-places, Google-products or any of their own business units that compete with natural indexed content. It is too soon to know if Google will be forced to change or if they will change on their own accord. Or if Google’s lobby is strong enough to maintain the status quo.

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Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

ABJ’s Christopher Calnan interviewed CEO Joe Devine, who shared news about the companies’ growth and how the Cloud Family of Businesses came to be.

The article was published in the print edition of the Austin Business Journal on January 7, 2010 and on its web site as premium content.

To read the full article on ABJ Entrepreneur, click here: Austin tech founders on Cloud 8.

In his CEO Spotlight, Joe talks about his role in the company, ideas about the future of SEO, and what makes The Search Engine Guys different from all of the other web marketing firms in the industry.

To read the full interview, click here: http://www.visibilitymagazine.com/internet_marketing_magazine/articles/ceo_spotlight/winter-2010/15/the-search-engine-guys-llc/joe-devine

This article will also be featured in the Winter 2010 print edition of the magazine.

It was originally published on Saturday, November 13. Check out the article here: http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/13/facebook-bing-seo/

Then, this morning, the Venture Beat article was syndicated on the New York Times’ technology page. To read the full article on that site, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2010/11/13/13venturebeat-how-facebooks-partnership-with-bing-will-cha-25582.html?ref=technology

This is very exciting news for TSEG! Please give the article a read and let us know what you think. We would love to hear your comments!

The Outstanding Achievement award is the second-highest honor bestowed by the IMA judges. The criteria on which we were judged included design, content, feature functionality, usability, standards compliance, and cross-browser compatibility.

To view The Search Engine Guys Award Gallery page, visit:
http://www.interactivemediaawards.com/winners/gallery.asp?id=45078

The certificate will soon be hanging in the Austin office: http://www.interactivemediaawards.com/winners/certificate.asp?param=78546&cat=1

Google grew nearly 3 percent in the same time period.  This places Google's search market share to almost 65%.  This dominant share has kept Google as the leader in the search engine industry.  

If you would like to know more about search engines and how they work, contact The Search Engine Guys at 800-267-1704. 

Google believes that the increased size of the text box helps to emphasize that Google is focused on "searching".  This type of focus on "searching" is one of the reasons that Google has maintained such a large market share for search engines.

If you would like to know more about search engine optimization, contact The Search Engine Guys at 800-267-1704. 

The algorithm attempts to immitate consumer behavior as closely as possible. To do this, it looks for new stories with established citations. It also gives more weight to local sources but prefers trusted sources. Striking the right balance seems to be the key to a highly ranked news story. This also applies to the search engine, for which Google has not and likely will not reveal its algorithm.

If you would like to know more about search engine optimization, contact The Search Engine Guys at 800-267-1704.

Because so many people turn immediately to search engines for information, it is important for any business to make sure it can be found. Unlike with a phone book, you do not simply pay for a spot. Every website that comes up on Google or any other search engine is given placement based on its relevancy.

If you would like to know more about search engines and how they work, contact The Search Engine Guys at 800-267-1704.