Google and Yahoo have announced big changes that will impact your small business

Google and Yahoo have announced big changes that will impact your small business web site.

Several weeks ago Google announced the latest version of its' Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released.

If you see some change, good or bad, in your web traffic or your search engine rankings you know where it came from. 

What Google is working towards, based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, is to  identify low-quality web page content more precisely. With that accomplished, there will be a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites in search engine results.

Meanwhile, Yahoo announced that it is closing the Yahoo directory after 20 years of operation. Sure, they will have the Yahoo search engine available but no longer will they be maintaining their own directory of web sites and blogs.

Over the years I have been comparing the search engine results between Google, Bing and Yahoo. Here are three useful SEO characteristics I found ….

1. Google updates the web site content you submit to them within a week - or sooner, once your site is indexed. 

2. Bing and Yahoo seem to have similar search results although not exactly, but they are much different than Google and not as specific.

3. Bing and Yahoo take longer than two months to update your site content submissions. 

All in all, I think Google is the best place to focus your efforts relating to SEO (search engine optimization). Sure, being indexed in Bing and Yahoo is necessary but you just can't rely on a quick turn around of your content updates in those two search engines.

Some of my latest client SEO results in Google include (without using quotation marks)….

Searching on “medford roofing” or “medford roofing contractor” you will find Skye Roofing and Rogue River Roofing Co on the first page of search results.

Searching on “medford electrical services” or “medford energy retrofit” or electrical contractor medford” or “energy contractor medford" to find Aztec Electrical Services on the first page of search results.
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