What makes searches on Google more powerful aren’t the searches alone, but using the right operators or syntaxes. For example, have you ever used the “+” sign while searching in Google before? It was one of the oldest search operators in Google and was used the first time the site was up and running.

If you haven’t tried using the “+” sign while searching or haven’t heard about it at all, then you have missed out on one of the simplest yet most powerful conventions in Google. Yes, there used to be a Google + search operator, which came in way earlier than Google+ (the social network.) The syntax has been available since the start of Google.

How the Google + Search Operator Works

The search operator was simply used by typing the plus (+) sign before the phrase or words that you were looking for. Basically, its purpose was when you wanted to search for a word or a phrase and want the results with the exact words or phrases. Because Google likes to match several terms (often unrelated to your search) to your searches, the + operator was very helpful because it only gave you what you needed in the results. Today, if you type in the + sign before the words or phrase you are searching, Google will automatically ignore it right away.

How to Restrict Searches Today

So, without the + operator, how do you restrict your results to whatever it is that you want? To do so, now you have to put a quotation mark before and after the term to make sure that Google matches the word precisely. While that’s also easy to do, more and more power-users are complaining because of course, typing the + sign before or in between the words is definitely easier than using quotation marks.

This change was made without any announcement. In fact, users were just shocked to find out eventually that the + operator no longer worked at all. Because there was no announcement, no reasons were given as to why the change was made.

Why Did Google Remove the + Search Operator?

Once again, because Google made no announcement on such change, no reasons were given. Hence, we can only speculate. Many users say that its because of the new Google+ Social network. Perhaps, Google does not want the + search operator to be confused with Google+ especially now that the site uses the + sign to mention friend’s names, quite similar to the @ mention syntax of Facebook or @ reply syntax of Twitter. Continuing either would probably create conflict, and with the growing popularity of Google+, they may have decided to let go of the former.

Considering that the + operator was one convention that was there ever since the start of Google in 1997, numerous power users are sad to see its demise. After all, it has been used by many Google power-uses to make their searches easier to do. Unfortunately, its doom was inevitable, given the fact that the need for Google+ profile searching and replying would have to come first.

Mobile Value Track is one such tool. With the Internet being used by majority of the people around the world today, devices have sprung up from everywhere to enable users to get connected anytime, anywhere. These web tools allow users to track the clicks that their ads get from mobile devices.

The Mobile Value Track functions the same way for any mobile ads, whether they are WAP mobile ads, regular text or image ads. It also works for majority of handheld devices being used today: iPhones and other devices that are Internet-capable. To be able to use this tool, advertisers just need to add the Mobile Value Track parameter {ifmobile:NewTagName} to the URL destination whenever you are creating a normal text ad. You can simply replace the “NewTagName” in the parameter above with the tag that you want added.

You can also redirect your potential customers, who use mobile devices, to a separate mobile optimized website of your ad. This can be done by adding the Mobile Track parameter to your page’s URL. It is important to note that you need to have your site mobile optimized for this function to work.

Another option for web advertisers would be to use third party tracking tags. Google says that to do this you will have to insert a certain tag to your URL destination. You can now track the clicks that your ads are getting and this will help you gauge your ads’ performance in the SERPs.

The broad match modifier is a feature that can be found in the Google AdWords tool for SEO. It enables users to create keywords that will have a greater impact in the search engine results pages. It helps SEO practitioners focus their strategies on specific keywords rather than on a broader phrase or group of words. Enabling the broad match modifier in your SEO campaign will result in more clicks and conversions for your targeted keywords. It will also come at an attractive ROI, better than the usual match modifier.

To enable this setting to function, users must put a plus (+) symbol in front of their targeted keyword/s in the broad match search. If you want two keywords to be modified then you can put plus symbols in front of all the words you are targeting. For example, if you are targeting the keywords home accessories, you should put plus symbols preceding these words (i.e. +home accessories, +home +accessories, home +accessories) to enable the broad modifier setting. The words should also appear in its correct form on the user’s searches, or as a close variant.

Close variants, as defined by Google, include misspelled words (i.e. hmoe), singular or plural form of the words, abbreviations, acronyms and even stemmings (words +
-ing). Synonyms and related words are not considered close variants. Web developers, though, advise SEO practitioners to proceed with caution as the broad match modifier can have positive and negative impacts to SEO campaigns if not properly used.

If exact match keywords are being used in a campaign, then the broad match modifier can be 100% helpful. However, if you mainly use broad match keywords/phrases in your campaign, then the broad match modifier can do the opposite and come up with negative impacts. Google advises developers to maintain two sets of keywords for their campaign to cater to both systems.

The broad match modifier setting is available to Google AdWords users all over the world, in most languages that Google is available in. Updates and further announcements will be posted by the Google team in the official AdWords blog.

While Google still holds the lead in terms of overall market share, Yahoo! has been making adjustments and has since been performing strongly against its competition.

Google and Yahoo!’s Differences

Though both are playing in the same field, lots of differences set Google apart from Yahoo! and vice versa. For web developers, it is especially important to take note of the differences between the two search engines’ criteria when it comes to ranking websites and giving relevance to web pages. Here are some of the differences between the two:

1. Number of backlinks on the website

For Yahoo!, it focuses more on the actual quantity of backlinks a webpage has. There are some websites that have a massive amount of backlinks that rank high in Yahoo! SERPs but whose rank in Google is abysmal.

The difference is that Google’s focus is more directed towards the quality of the backlinks involved. They take note of the IP domains and protocols used by the sites linking back to you. If they see that several links come from just one domain then they usually disregarded it in their counts.

2. The issue of using multiple domains for backlinks

Furthering the issue discussed above, Google has a very keen eye with regards to websites using multiple domains that relatively have the similar content as backlinks. They stress this fully on their SEO policy and guidelines.

Though Yahoo! seems to have a softer eye towards the said issue, the company has also stated that duplicate and mirror domains are prohibited in their search engine rankings. In general, creating multiple domains with similar content is never a good SEO strategy.

3. On link relevance

The quality of links is what’s most important for Google. No matter how many backlinks your website might have, if it’s not quality then you might as well throw away your hopes of getting higher page rankings. Yahoo! also puts weight on the quality of backlinks present in your site but they also focus more on the quantity involved. This makes Google stricter that Yahoo! in terms of link relevance in the SEO process.

4. On SEO

The differences with regards to the basic onsite SEO techniques between the two search engines is pretty much zero.

If you are thinking of ways with which to maximize your presence in both search engines, you will have to take note that Google has the larger market share at the end of the day. Plus the focus that Google gives on the actual quality of links means that their guidelines will be pretty much applicable to Yahoo! and the other lesser known search engines. The SEO process is still a pretty complicated endeavor to do. Being guided accordingly is a must for every web developer out there.

Google Maps is a tool that enables users to search for the exact address of establishments not only in the United States but also from other countries in the world. Just recently, Google Maps has officially launched an updated version that will allow business owners to tag their establishments in local result pages.

The service will cost businesses a total of $25 a month but the pay back will be so much more. Not only will they be able to help their customers locate their stores or franchises correctly, Google has also given businesses the chance to update their customers about the latest promos that their businesses are having.

The tagging service will come in play here. The yellow tag prices, aptly named Posts—info that can be seen on the result pages just below your establishment’s name—will contain anything regarding your business that you want advertised. These posts will entirely be on the business owners’ discretion. These posts can include sales, discounts, happy hour specials, and many others.

Before its full launch, this tool was only provided in 11 states but now that Google has fully launched this service in the market, it will be available in all of the United States. With many business owners turning more and more to the internet for their marketing needs, Google is leveling up and making sure that they provide their users what they want and need.

Other countries will also be involved in this massive Google Maps upgrade. These countries include Austria, Belgium, France, and Germany among others. Now, advertising your business has never been easier.

Before, you could only examine the impact of these changes implemented in an ad campaign by analyzing results before and after their implementation. However, according to ACE’s products marketing manager Courtney Lischke, this kind of evaluation can face complications from certain variables during the trial period, such as events or idle time and changes in user behavior. Now, with Google’s ACE, advertisers can execute more efficiently and effectively because users can observe data changes during the simultaneous split tests in real time, hence more accurate test results. You can tell precisely whether or not your experiments have produced significant results.

Advertisers can experiment with ACE using any combination of keyword, Ad Group, placement, and bid changes. There are many possible situations you can try to measure, such as when you add more keywords to the ad campaign you are running or when you revise keyword and Ad Word level bids. You can try to reorganize Content campaigns with more tightly themed Ad groups. You may also observe different results from changing the volume of your campaign with diverse keyword match types. Moreover, you can compare and contrast the changes when you use an ad group default bid and a keyword level bid.

Google’s AdWords Campaign Experiments is still in its beta phase, and the company has invited several advertisers from the United States to run their tests.

Google addresses this by their introduction of the Webmaster tools. Just recently, they upgraded their service so that users will be able to receive better 404 reporting. A bad 404 reporting is otherwise known as a soft 404. 404 is a response code usually given by web crawlers to indicate that a website does not exist given a URL. A soft 404 happens when a non-existent website is recognized as existing by a web crawler when in fact it does not. Crawlers usually give a 200 code response for pages found successfully. With the soft 404, a site that has already changed URLs or simply does not exist anymore is still given a 200 code.

Instead of a web page together with its contents, users are given a page that says the page does not exist anymore but is still recognized by the crawler. This can pose the problem of significant customer traffic being directed to that non-existent URL instead of the site’s latest one.

Google upgraded their Webmasters tool and gave their users a chance to filter these soft 404s themselves. Eliminating 404s are easy and important in the success of your whole SEO strategy. Here are some tips that Google has for webmasters to decrease their soft 404 occurrence:

1. Regularly check if there are soft 404s or soft 404-like URLs listed on your Webmaster tools.
2. Determine if the URLs of your soft 404s have the right content and is actually not a soft 404.
3. For your actual soft 404s, they should 301-redirect the correct site URL which means that if a URL is really dead, visitors should be directed properly to its latest existing URL.
4. Confirm all of your changes by using the “Fetch as GoogleBot” feature in your Webmasters tools. Also, set-up your 404 pages in such a way that your customers will be directed accordingly in their searches.

Google, one of the major players in the SEO realm, has constantly been on the development process to make sure that they keep their rankings as accurate as possible. They have also increasingly tracked down websites and meticulously inspected them to keep the sanctity of their search results pages.

Get Excited with Google’s Caffeine

Google’s latest invention is aimed at furthering the cause of accurate search engine optimization. Released early in 2010, Google Caffeine is intended to fix the glitches and holes that many web developers have learned to exploit over time.

It tracks down sites that are utilizing misleading reciprocal links in order to get ahead of the competition. This tactic results in them having surging ahead of those who painstakingly labor through the process of natural link building.

The release of Google Caffeine does not discredit those websites that employ paid and reciprocal link building. Not at all! Caffeine is intended to clean up the SEO mess brought about by too much bad and spam links. Caffeine aims to reward those who work hard in their link building processes and penalize those who cheat in their processes.

Technical Details about Google Caffeine

Back in November of 2009, Matt Cutts, a Google engineer working for the company’s Search Quality Group, said that Google will be introducing Google Caffeine in a gradual pace. This resulted in many web developers having no idea when Caffeine would be fully implemented at that time.

Caffeine is basically a newer and much improved version of the Google search engine. Its algorithms differ to those of the older versions because it is intended to provide a faster and more comprehensive search engine results to its users. Google caffeine relies more on keyword phrases rather than the traditional keywords to provide searchers with more comprehensive results and options that would make the users searching easier.

Also with Google Caffeine, real-time search results are suddenly pushed into the limelight. This development from Google gives more attention, not only to the relevancy posted by a website, but also as important is the freshness of the content posted.

With Google Caffeine, latest results would include updates from social networking sites or recently published articles about the topic being searched for. Taking advantage of Google Caffeine would now mean that you not only post relevant content but also post content that are up to date and fresh.

Here are some of the basic things web developers may want to know about Google Caffeine:

1. Speed matters, always

With the older version of Google, speed is not necessarily a major part of the SEO equation. On the other hand, Caffeine places relevant consideration to page speed or how fast a website can load up for their visitors. This has been a baffling development for many web developers since how fast a page loads would mean upgrading their servers to be able to hasten up their loading process.

Also, page speed depends on a variety of factors, some of which the web developer has no control over. This includes factors such as CSS, HTML Content, JavaScript, domain hosting, usage of images, graphics, and other files.

With speed being a relevant factor to a page’s search engine rankings, many website owners and developers have began to take action and upgrade their systems to ensure faster web page loading and higher rankings for their sites.

2. Think domain authority

A particular domain possesses a certain authority that search engine crawlers take into consideration when determining the ranking of your website. In Google Caffeine, this factor takes an even more important role in page rankings besides the quantity of incoming links or the former page rankings of your website.

Factors to consider when choosing domains for your site would include exact-matching domain names and significant amounts of anchor texts from diverse domains. Websites featuring all these would sometimes trump in the SERPs known authority websites such as Wikipedia, Amazon or BBC.

3. Expanded search results

With Google Caffeine, popular social networking sites are now given as much importance as regular blogs and web pages. Google Caffeine shows results coming from websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and others, a significant change from the older Google version where updates from these websites are not really given prime consideration.

4. Domain age or longevity of domain existence

Since the SEO and SERP game is all about establishment and authority, brand new domains would have to wait their turn and build up their reputations first before they actually move up the search engine rankings. Especially with the new Google Caffeine, brand new domains would have a harder time being on top since this new development takes into consideration the time with which the domain of a certain website has existed. Already established domain names have the advantage here over the newly-made ones.

5. Domains that have exact matching names

Though a very simple factor, this is the one often ignored by many web developers. Having an exact matching domain name will make it easier for your website to be found by search engine crawlers. For example, having the domain name Financialconsultants.com will almost always shoot this website up the SERPs when visitors search for “financial consultants”. Take this into consideration the next time you plan on building a new website.

6. Google Caffeine now returns increased results

Due to the faster time with which crawlers can find and index websites, Google Caffeine has the ability to return and index a larger number of website per search.

7. Relevant Content always matters

Despite all of these other considerations, nothing is still as important as relevant content. Google may have tweaked a bit on their search algorithms in order to accommodate to this host of other factors, relevant content will still be the most important factor among them all.

Without relevant, fresh, and unique articles or posts in our website, despite all the upgrades you may have made, search engine crawlers would just bypass your website or worse even put it in a bad light. Outstanding content attracts search engine crawlers more than fancy upgrades or domain names. You can do all the upgrades that you want but always remember the bottom line of the whole search engine optimization process: CONTENT IS ALWAYS KING!

Taking Full Advantage of Google Caffeine

With real-time search results in the equation, web developers should take note that posting fresh and unique content is important in generating enough traffic and links back to their sites. Strategy is important here. Since it’s real time, web developers can take advantage of this by posting content just in time and in sync with the trending topics among search engines.

Aside from continually posting relevant content for Google Caffeine to see, web developers can also upgrade their servers to be more in line with Caffeine’s new criteria of fast browser loading. These updated search engine spiders do not like to wait for domains to load so they can search them. Almost always, they will ignore these and go to another faster website. This will not bode well with your SERP process.

All in all, the key to maximizing Google Caffeine and make sure you keep you rankings on the positive side is to always be an authority source, relevant and reputable. Provide great content. Content should be information rich and helpful to your visitors. Do this and the good search engine rankings will eventually come.

Dofollow blogs are a trend nowadays. Simply put, blogs are almost always set up in order to drive customer traffic into a site and hopefully have some of these readers link back to your web page. The comments section of a blog page is where most of the interactions take place.

The comments section of a blog usually serves a dual purpose:

One, it serves as an interactive part of your page that your readers can go to drop their thoughts about the topic you are talking about. Many readers browse through a blog’s comments section because this is where the conversation is continued. Many readers themselves are educated and are willing to suggest a thing or two to further expand the topics you are talking about.

Two, the comments section can provide your blog with a handful of inbound links from readers who found your entry or entries interesting and relevant with regards to their own sites. Many users actually leave links to heir favorite sites or even their own web sites in the comments section for further reference on the topics discussed. These result in many inbound links for the web site’s usage.

But today, Dofollow blogs have also been encountering infiltrations from spammers and other hacks that do nothing but bring the page’s rankings down. These bad links can also cause a web page to disappear altogether in the search engine’s indexes and rankings. Being vigilant is always the way to go with regards to these bad links especially if you are maintaining and would like to continue using a Dofollow blog.

Here are some things you can do to avoid the negative results of bad links in your Dofollow blogs:

1. Follow your comments section closely

This is especially so if you are on top of the SEO rankings and have a large customer base that is following your blog. But if you have both of these covered already then it should be safe to say that you are vigilant in maintaining the sanctity and authority of your web site.

But for some other who do not, it is time to start doing so. Google, through all these years in the search engine business, has come up with newer and more advanced ways in tracking down spam or bad links. Anything they see as malicious, no matter how high the rank of that particular website is and how established it is, is going to be dealt with.

Follow your comments section as you would the other parts of your blog. Remove all the bad links and enjoy high authority rankings throughout your blog’s lifetime.

2. Use tools that are available online

Sometimes, web developers and bloggers do not have that much time in their hands to manually patrol their web sites and see if they are inadvertently harboring spam messages and links. This is where software programs and services such as Akismet come in. These anti-spamming service providers can be used by bloggers and installed on their pages in order to track down and eliminate spam.

You can also use CAPTCHA to avoid spam messages and links in your comments sections. Basically, the CAPTCHA eliminates the possibility of automatically-generated messages (meaning spam messages) from being posted especially in your vulnerable Dofollow blogs. Make your readers type a code that usually spam-generating software won’t be able to understand and you can sit back and see your page rankings stay on top of the lists.

Dofollow Website Lists

Here are some web sites that employ the Dofollow scheme in providing service to their users.

• WordPress.com
• Tumblr
• Live Journal
• Blogspot
• Thoughts.com
• Blogetery
• Blogster
• EasyJournal

Some social networking web sites also use Dofollow in providing services. These include:

• Xanga
• Yedda
• RateItAll.com

Article submission directories oftentimes employ the Dofollow feature in their web pages. Some of the more popular brands include:

• Ezine Article Submission
• Yahoo MyWeb
• Reddit
• GoArticles
• Propeller
• Idea Marketers
• Article Dashboard Directory
• Article Alley

Four months ago, the biggest search engine in the world launched Google Buzz and embedded it as a feature in Gmail. Dubbed as the brand’s “Twitter killer,” Google Buzz needs no set-up and automatically adds Gmail contacts to Buzz’s Friends page. Google Buzz fuses the social networking features found in renowned websites such as Facebook, complementing the mailing service that Gmail provides.

Here are some of the key features of Google Buzz:

• Automated Friend’s List
• Rapid sharing of updates, photos, videos, etc.
• Public or private sharing has been made easier.
• Integration of updates
• The “Recommended Buzz”

Aside from all of these features, Google and other developers in the market have come up with several tools for people to further enhance their Google Buzz experience. Google has been known to be an advocate of web developers. They usually take up applications that are made by whomever and have them available to use by their Gmail or Buzz users.

Many developers have constantly taken advantage in bringing their own developments and make it available for use in Google Buzz. These web tools can be used and integrated into their Buzz accounts to effectively manage Buzz accounts:

1. Buzz Can Tweet

This Buzz tool is prefect for users who have Twitter accounts and would want to simultaneously manage Buzz and Twitter accounts in one go. In this set-up, a user who signs up for the Buzz Can Tweet service will be able to post tweets on their Twitter accounts and make these appear on their Google Buzz pages, and vice versa. Your Buzz updates will also be sent to your Twitter account making it easier for your followers on both social networks to know what you are doing.

Another advantage of this set-up is the easier sharing and posting of various files such as pictures and video. Your followers on Twitter will be able to see your posts even without their own Google Buzz accounts.

2. BuzzStats

Like your typical search engine optimization, Google Buzz ranks its users according to the popularity of their posts or accounts. By using BuzzStats, users can manage their rankings and find other high ranking users with whom they can connect to.

This tool will also give you the raw status of your website in the overall Buzz landscape. It will show you data about the number of your followers, the number of people you follow and the trend with which your network is growing. BuzzStats will give you an idea of how effective your over-all management of your account is. From there, you can make necessary adjustments to pull your site up the rankings.

3. Buzzzy.com

Much like search engine optimization, which Google has been known for, Google Buzz can give its users search results from among the Buzz updates by its users. Buzzzy is an advanced search tool that enables Buzz users to search for a keyword from among the updates of Buzz users. This search tool will return results related to the keyword or topic being searched for.

4. Buzzr.com

A poll-like Buzz tool that enables the account owner to make a mock poll of all his posts to see what are the most read ones and most popular. The Buzzr also allows your followers to re-buzz your posts to their accounts resulting in natural links and added visitor traffic.

Each Buzz by your followers accounts for a vote which Buzzr will tally in its on-site rankings. Here you will have an idea of the topics that are more popular to your followers so that you can make adjustments according to what’s hot and what’s not.

5. Rebuzz This

Rebuzz This is a social bookmarking tool that allows your followers to mark your posts that they like and buzz them in their own accounts. Much like Buzzr and TweetMe, Twitter’s bookmarking tool, the posts and files rebuzzed by your followers are then indexed in the home page of Rebuzz This.

6. NJuice Google Buzz Button

This a is web service tool that Google Buzzers can use to scan other social networking websites that may have posts and contents that may interest you. Some of the social networking sites scanned by NJuice include Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter among others. In this way, you can post in your Buzz account something that your friend had posted on Facebook. Significant amount of natural links can result in using the NJuice Google Buzz button.

7. Gone Buzz

Linking to other popular users in Google Buzz will greatly boost your rankings and popularity. Google Buzz has this feature of automatically connecting your Gmail contacts to your Buzz account. But if you want to expand your network to include the popular buzz users, Buzz will leave it all up to you. This is where Gone Buzz becomes handy.

Gone Buzz will give you the most popular Buzz users so it would possible for you to connect with them and follow them. Your search will return not only the names of the popular users, it also includes a short description/bio, their location, a list of their posts and the ranking that they have with Google.

Rapid Development of Google Buzz

Google Buzz is relatively new in the social networking industry but the majority of Buzz users have already seen the advantages it offers barely four months after its inception. Though not as popular as the biggest social networking site, Google Buzz has already gained a foothold in the industry.