Google Cleans Up Search Results - Way To Go Google

A few months ago we wrote a post about how Google could clean up their search listings and they have responded in a big way.

Google’s string of Panda updates was the first shot. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, announced in his blog way back in January of 2011 that they would be starting on a vigorous anti-spam update. In February of 2011, the first Panda/Farmer update happened. The Panda updates are a series of updates aimed at cleaning up search results.

The Penguin update goes further. On April 24, 2012 Google announced their “webspam algorithm update.” This has been termed Penguin by those that give the algo updates fuzzy names. Penguin adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing.

Do they still have more to do? Yes. Obviously Google has to fight an ever changing war on spammers who try to game the results and take short cuts to manipulate their search results. We believe they are willing to go the distance and for this we applaud all their work. Do we believe they will do it?  Yes. Past history tells us they will.

Search is big business and Google is at the forefront. When the public cries foul because they are getting poor results, Google listens. And listen they should, because SEARCH is the core component of the Google dynasty.

If you’re interested in getting to the top of the rankings for your terms and products, we advise following the Google Webmaster Guidelines to the letter. Otherwise the next ranking update may target you.

If all these Google updates are hurting your rankings you might want to change your tactics or you could just hire Blackball Online Marketing to do it for you.

For a complete list of when the Google Algorithm is changed and updated click the link.

How To Use Google Advanced Search

Nearly 17 billion explicit core U.S. searches were conducted in January of 2011 alone. Google Sites ranked first with 11.1 billion searches. Source – comScore. It is the worldwide defacto information gathering and retrieval source. We depend on it for our day to day Pittsburgh Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization work.

Google has provided us with an even better way to retrieve information - Advanced Search. We believe that increasing your efficiency with these techniques for acquiring more targeted and therefore better information will serve you well. Whether  your looking for a favorite song from days gone by or an electrician, Advanced Search can help.

To help you explore Google’s Advanced Search we have provided links to the specific sections along the way for you to follow along and try your own Advanced Searches, so let’s get on with it.

The Google Advanced Search Link

As the image shows, navigating to the Google Homepage and looking just to the right of the Search box appears a diminutive link with a whole world of possibilities behind it. So click it. Click this Google Advanced Search Link if you don't see it on the Google homepage.

The Google Advanced Search Query Page

Google Advanced Search Options page

You should now see the above image. The Google Advanced Search interface customizes your queries to the Google Index for you. This is very powerful for refining your search to provide the most topical and relevant information. It does this by using human questions not Boolean operators, so it in effect teaches you advanced operators as you go. This is very cool and extremely powerful.

Google Advanced Search in Action – Constructing Your Query

In this section we’ll walk you through some of the advanced options and give you some insight into how to harness the power of the Advanced Search operators.  For the purpose of this post we’re going to target a topic we know well – Google Advanced Search.

Entering the search phrase Google Advanced Search into the this exact wording or phrase box adds quotation marks around the query. It’s no surprise that this effectively matches Google’s best results for the exact phrase you entered.

TIP about the Tip Links - In addition you can click any of the tip links to the right of the query boxes in Advanced Search to learn how to do advanced searches in standard search.

Google Advanced Search Screen Results

Advanced search also builds your query in the box above at the top of the Advanced Search screen. This will come in handy when we enter our custom queries into our How to use Google Alerts Post which is coming very soon.

Some other queries on the Advanced Search page are:

• Using the OR operator by selecting to enter your query into the one or more of these words query box.
• Searching without specific words using the Don’t show pages that have any of these unwanted words query box.
• Searching within a certain file type using the File Type query box can be very helpful for digging through resource material.

Additional posts on Advanced Search Operations and Operators can be found amazingly by doing an Advanced Search and selecting the Advanced reading level option.

Google Advanced Search Operations and Operators

Additional Advanced Search Options

An additional section also appears in a link at the bottom of the Advanced Search page; the date, usage rights, numeric range, and more link. See the results below when the plus sign is clicked.

Additional Date Usage Rights Numeric Range and More

We use the date option frequently to get the most current results about a given topic and excluding old and outdated information. Other helpful information resides here so it is important to mention.

Using Google Advanced Search can give you Creative and Competitive Intelligence that would have taken hours to sift through. Learning to use these free tools from Google can enhance your effectiveness at your job or speed up your personal search experience. We hope you enjoyed this post. Please leave us a comment about your own experiences with Google Advanced Search.

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Check out our video and please leave a comment on this post or on our Pittsburgh Internet Marketing YouTube Channel.