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After years of anticipation and a fair amount of excitement last Friday, the visible impact of Google's new Penguin 4.0 seems to be underwhelming--so far. The consensus is that, in fact, there has been no impact. The new release of Penguin 4.0, confirmed last Friday on Google's blog, means link penalties will be refreshed in real time, so that in theory, ranking corrections and improvements to a site's rankings will happen quickly and not require months or even years of

Google has revealed significantly more about its local search ranking factors, and it's the kind of info you can immediately use to enhance your own site's local ranking. An expanded Google Help page lives up to its title, "Improve your local ranking on Google," as highlighted in Search Engine Land's April Fools' Day post. This is no joke, however. It's not so much about change--the same three local ranking factors as before are there--relevance, distance, and prominence. It's more about

Yesterday, Google announced that they would be restructuring the upper-crust of their brand into a holding company that will simply be known as Alphabet. At the surprise of many (including owners of pre-existing companies already called "Alphabet"), Google's co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, announced that the decision was made so that Google could continue its legacy as the most-used search engine in the world while its now-sister companies continue to evolve the world outside of the web. For instance,

Google has announced that it will be changing how they handle AdWords misspellings, using plurals and other discrepancies for keywords or phrases. Now in mid-May, Google will match close variations to phrases and keywords that may appear in search results. This will make things for users and for advertisers much easier. While Google’s organic search results already offer this, it will now include AdWords results. The reason for the change is that 7% of all searches contain misspellings. There are

What’s with the Google Blue Arrow? Google is all about the subtle changes lately - Google Instant rolled out in such a subtle way that many people were seeing it without realizing it. Now, another subtle-yet-significant change has been introduced in the form of a blue arrow. The tiny blue arrow appears next to the top result, and acts much like a cursor does. Using the up and down arrows, you can move the cursor to the result you want