Buzz, Google ISP, Vancouver – SEO weekly news 13 Feb 2010

Another week of top SEO news from influential industry sources, collated and commented on, to save you the bother. This weeks highlights include Google Buzz, Yahoo leaving search and Vancouver 2010 online.

Google Buzz

As I mentioned earlier in the week, Google’s new social platform: Buzz has arrived, bringing with it a chance to get more instantly indexed SERP real estate. There have been mixed reactions to the news, including  doubt about its ability to compete with Facebook and Twitter from Robert Scoble (posted prior to its release), followed shortly by a report on Mashable 2 days after launch reporting there have already been over 9 million posts and comments and some thoughts on why Google chose a name that Yahoo had already used from WebProNews.

Google taking over the world

You could be forgiven for thinking Google is trying to take over the world – not content with search, maps, books, phones and now a social platform, they’ve now decided to become an ISP, with a new fibre network. I would call this over-diversifying.

Matt Cutts on keyword ranking, nofollow and changing hosts

Matt responded to a question about whether Google will offer keyword ranking reports by saying they’re not planning on doing a full reporting tool in the immediate future, but webmaster tools are already showing keyword details reports which display some of this information and no doubt there will be more to come.

He mentioned in a video on the usefulness of nofollow links, that whilst search engines won’t attribute link juice to nofollow links, not to get too hung up about building links purely for search, since any links which are genuinely useful to users (i.e. not the pointless Viagra related links I find in my blog spam filter daily) can attract traffic.

Finally Cutts confirms there should be no adverse effect in changing hosting provider and therefore IP address (at least to another host within the same country), so long as the domain stays the same and there’s no downtime, but advises that reducing the DNS Time To Live (to 5 minutes) beforehand will smooth the transition.

Yahoo no longer in search

With a deal likely between Yahoo and Microsoft,  SEO Roundtable commented on a poll about whether Yahoo is no longer ‘in search’. Based on the fact that Yahoo will soon not be using its own algorithms, the conclusion of both the poll and comments is that Yahoo is no longer in search. Bad news if you don’t rank well in Bing (like me unfortunately).

Having said that, an article from WebProNews on where Yahoo fits into your search strategy suggests it might not be out for the count yet, especially for local search with the recently released Sketch a Search.

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Logos – Time sensitive search

SEO Roundtable pointed out Google, Yahoo and they have changed their logos to celebrate the Vancouver Winter Olympics currently taking place.

From Google & Yahoo’s point of view, it’s obviously good to be current, but it’s a reminder that writing topical content increases your findability in SERPs. Indeed I mentioned Vancouver in the title of this article for exactly that reason and no doubt that was the inspiration behind this article about how to enjoy the Winter Olympics online from WebPronews!