Google reshuffled the deck with Search Plus Your World days before my SMX Israel presentation on the future of search. What Plus and Panda tell us about how Google sees the future of search.

1. Gil Reich (@GilR)
Managing Greatness
GODZILLA, SNUFFLEUPAGUS, AND
THE FUTURE OF SEARCH SUCCESS
PLUS, PANDA & BEYOND

2. Most Radical Transformation
Ever (?)
Google can make major changes tomorrow. But their general direction seems clear.
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

3. Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

4. Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

5. Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

6. Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

7. Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

8. Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

9. It’s easier to detect social spam than link spam ~@VanessaFox
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

10. Snuffy or Godzilla?
Google sees itself as Snuffleupagus; its critics see it as Godzilla ~@JeffJarvis
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

11. 2001: The Australia Strategy
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

12. 2012: Nowhere to Hide
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

13. Not Your Mother’s SERPs
What people once called search and SEO are dead. Search will increasingly
involve social, local, personalization, video, etc.
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

14. Quality & Spam
The people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups.
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

15. The Thin Content Problem
Amit: We got a lot of good fresh content, and
some not so good.
Matt: It was like, “What’s the bare minimum
that I can do that’s not spam?” It sort of fell
between our respective groups.
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

16. The Hole in Google’s Defense
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

17. Google’s Blind Spot (BP)
 Pages:
 Mass produced
 Highly targeted
 Not spam
 Sites:
 Trusted
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

18. Google’s Response
 Panda Publisher Pollution Penalty
 Starts using signals previously considered too
spammable:
 User behavior
 Social profile
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

19. Penalty and Ranking Factor
 Site-wide (like a Penalty)
 Ranking Factor (like incoming links …)
 Updated Infrequently (like PageRank)
It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping! ~Chevy Chase
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

20. Penalties: Before & After
Before After
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

21. Panda vs Demand Media
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

22. Document Classifier
IRS
Scrapers
Wikipedia
Thin Content
New York Times
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

23. Pogo-Sticking
… the number of times that other
search results are selected after a
particular search result is
selected … may be used to
improve search result ranking …
--Yahoo! Patent
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

24. Pogo Sticking
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

25. It’s too hard now to fake a natural footprint well enough to fool Google ~@GregBoser
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

26. Don’t Rank Where You Can’t
Deliver
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

27. Fix or Kill Your Worst Pages
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

28. Link Out
Better the user find the right site from you than by asking Google again.
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

29. Get Social
In May 2010 I said that we weren’t using Social Signals. Now we are. ~@MattCutts
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

30. SEO = Web Strategy
The job of SEO has been upgraded from
SEO to web strategist. Virtually
everything you do on the Internet with
your website can impact SEO today.
That is especially true following Panda.
-- Rand Fishkin
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

31. Google’s Timeless Problem
"Junk results" often wash out any results that a
user is interested in …
the number of documents … has been
increasing by many orders of magnitude.
People are still only willing to look at the first
few tens of results.
-- Larry Page, 1998
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

32. SUMMARY

33. Panda …
 Google corrected a key blind spot
 Penalties can be subtle & sitewide, and are
not just for spam
 Users hating some pages can now hurt your
whole site
 Google now considers all signals that it can
measure
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

34. Plus …
 Build your social profiles
 Build relationships
 Engage others
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

35. … and Beyond
 Harder to fake natural than to be natural
 Harder to spam in the age of social
 Focus on relationships and reputation
 SEO inseparable from web strategy
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

36. If You Missed Anything …
Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR