SEO Optimization Specialist

If you were ever in doubt about how much page one search results were worth, this recent data should make it quite obvious.  According to first quarter earning results from Google, paid search results earns them over $37.5 million dollars PER DAY!  Those are the sponsored ads you see above the organic results when you do a search using Google’s search engine.

Now lets’ put into perspective how much natural / organic page one results are worth.  A survey done by iProspect showed that 60.5% of Google, MSN and Yahoo users clicked on organic (natural/unpaid) results instead of paid results in a test query.  Additional studies show similar results, being that 60%-70% of users trusted non-paid results as opposed to only 30%-40% trusting paid results.

The bad news that is related directly to the above information is that spam and other black hat SEO techniques will still thrive in this type of cutthroat environment where it is worth so much to be listed higher in the search engine ranks.  This also brings into question all the recent Google penalties that seem to be designed to squash the competition.  Google keeps saying it is not fair for paid links to effect the search results but their own $40 million dollar a day business does exactly that, by allowing you to buy top spot regardless of the quality or relevance of your website.

Google updates URL’s for adwords, here is the official announcement:

We’d like to give you advance notice of an update to our display URL policy, which will take effect on April 1st. While the majority of advertisers will not be affected at all, action will be required from those who are. Please take a few minutes to read this post thoroughly, as the information below should help you determine whether you will be affected by this change.

In response to advertiser and user feedback, and in an effort to provide more relevant advertising results and a higher quality experience for our users, we have made the decision to no longer allow certain exceptions with regards to our display URL policy. This includes, but is not limited to redirects and vanity URLs. This policy will be strictly enforced regardless of past approvals and will apply to all advertisers, beginning on April 1st.

In line with our existing policy, we will continue to require that your ad’s display URL match its destination URL (the URL of your landing page).

For example, if your destination URL is www.google.com, your display URL must also be www.google.com. The following would not be acceptable display URLs for an ad for www.google.com:

www.google.co.uk - because this URL leads to a different site
www.gogle.com - even though this URL simply redirects to www.google.com it is still not acceptable
www.gooogle.com - because this URL leads to a page showing content identical to www.google.com

Good news for those of us that like a fair playing field.

Over the past couple of toolbar exports of page rank most in the business have noticed it seemed to get easier to get a high rank.  It seems this has cheapened Googles image and now they have tweaked the algorithm to make getting a high page rank a lot tougher.  Over the past 24 hours it appears many sites have taken a PR dive.  Here is a prelimanary list of some of the sites effected:

pegasusdirectory.com (PR3 from PR5)
linkcentre.com (PR3 from PR5)
suntimes.com (PR7 to PR5)
addurl-free.com(PR3 from PR5)
Engadget (from 7 to 5)
AutoBlog (from 6 to 4)
Problogger (from 6 to 4)
Copyblogger (from 6 to 4)
Search Engine Journal (from 7 to 4)
Quick Online Tips (from 6 to 3)
Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
SFGate.com (from 7 to 5)
joystiq.com/ (PR6 to PR4)
tuaw.com/ (PR6 to PR4)
linux.org  (PR6 from PR9)
accessify.com  (PR5 from PR9)
irt.org   (PR4 from PR8)
brajeshwar.com  (PR4 from PR7)
GoGuides.org  (3 from 5)

Some are shouting that this is some sort of penalty but I think it is just an algorithm tweak.  There seems to be many sites effected that don’t buy or sell links so without an official statement from Google we might never know for sure.  One thing for sure is you can expect to see much fewer PR6+ sites around the web.