Recent Changes to Google

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by Nathan Lindsey

On Monday, Google debuted some major changes. Google, one of the most popular search engines on the Web, is known for returning extremely relevant search results. Their recent partnership with Yahoo! has brought them publicity and increased traffic.

What exactly are these new changes, and how will they affect you?

Paid Links

The new paid link program has been running for a couple weeks now, company officials say, but the program has gone unadvertised so that Google could slowly beta test the system.

Paid links appear above normal search results. They have a different colored background and are marked "Sponsored Link." The idea is to set off Google's editorial search results from the paid links in a visually distinct way, so users aren't confused about which results are paid and which come from Google's search algorithm. This is important for visitors who use Google because it produces excellent search results and don't just want to be told which company paid the most money for a listing.

This new development is also important for Web site owners who use Google to get traffic. Much like GoTo or FindWhat, one can now pay a fee to be displayed prominently in a search for certain keywords on Google. This site has often preached the importance of being listed in Google. Google can send lots of traffic to your site, so just being in there at all is a must for the successful promotion of your site. Now there's a way you can be displayed at the top of the results for your keywords.

There are a few caveats about this, however.

I made a few test searches on Google that might be of interest to the netbusiness owner. The sponsored links returned were only for well-known very high-traffic sites. This, combined with the enormous popularity of Google, leads me to believe that paid links on Google might be quite expensive. There are no exact figures on the Google Web site, but I have a feeling that actually getting displayed for meaningful keywords could be too pricey for the small to medium business owner.

Also, if you do get listed, I think that many users will be turned off by the sponsored links. People use Google more than pay for position search engines because of the usefulness of the results it returns. Google users are interested in what Google thinks the best match for their search is. As such, many of them will probably just skip the obviously marked sponsored links.

Once again, I have to give Google a lot of credit for clearly distinguishing sponsored links from their normal search results and not trying to trick their visitors. Also, if a site has to have sponsors, it's great not having to wait for a banner to load to get your search results.

Stock Quotes

The second change Google made this week was to make it easier to find stock information. Now, whenever you search for a company's stock symbol on Google, at the top of the search results is a link to show the stock quotes for that company.

Also, if you search by name for a publicly traded company, you get a link to that company's stock quotes. This is very convenient if you don't happen to know a company's symbol off the top of your head.

Additional Languages

Google's third big change is the inclusion of ten new search languages. Users can now display Google search tips, help pages, and messages in Czech, Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Romanian. This brings Google's total number of supported languages up to twenty-five.

This is great for the ebusinessperson, who can now reach new users all over the world.

So...

Google is still the same search engine it was last week. It still returns very accurate search results, and people will continue using it in the same numbers they have in the past. What these changes have done is provide a new revenue source, which is good (we want Google to stay in business after all!), and increase usability, which is also good.

I'm still going to use Google for my searches, and having your business listed there should definitely still be one of your promotional priorities.