It seems Microsoft have come up with an idea that they hope might help them close some ground on Google on search share.

Obviously this isn’t going to happen overnight but if they can implement a system that returns better quality or is less corrupable than Google PageRank then at least they stand a better chance at attracting new users. We do of course have to bare in mind that the lead is currently huge and Google doesn’t stand still so I’d definitely stop short of saying this was a Google killer.

So what’s this fuss about then? Well Google’s success is built on PageRank- essentially a measure of website popularity by incoming links to a website. This popularity when coupled with relevancy can give a good indication of the importance of a website and therefore help rank it accurately. Now it isn’t quite that simple anymore - Google have added much to their algorithm to avoid easy interference by people trying to manipulate the index e.g. using link farms.

Microsoft are touting a system called BrowseRank which effectively takes a user’s browsing habits into account when working out importance. In other words the websites you visit regularly, the time you send on the site etc.

This is great from the perspective of search results and a hell of a lot more difficult to manipulate than current algorithms. Perhaps search engine optimisation would be come just that “optimisation” or maybe some companies would spend money on overall online marketing rather than just spending huge amounts of their budget just on SEO.

Who knows where we will be in a few years time but it’s the first real search idea I’ve seen come out from Microsoft that I’ve thought has real potential. I’m uneasy at Google’s current dominance in the search market and hope that the market becomes more open in the future (Microsoft or any other company).

So Google is following up on it’s mission to penalise high PageRank websites that sell links as they violate the Google guidelines.

It would seem the Economist has seen a significant PageRank drop which has been attributed to their practice of adding classified adverts at the bottom of their pages without the relevant robots.txt file or rel=”nofollow” attributes.

Firstly I think this is excellent work by Google I’m a strong believer in ethical SEO. In other words optimising what you have on a website not just conning Google into showing what are essentially erroronous results. This just isn’t good for the whole online community or Google in the long term.

By penalising such a high profile website I think it will make people sit up and listen that Google aren’t taking this lying down and also raises the profile of this guideline so that people that aren’t aware should perhaps check their code.

Whether the Economist knowingly did this is open to debate but as these links seem to be unrelated to a lot of the content on some pages the overall effectiveness of these incoming links has to have been lessened somewhat - Google is all about relevancy.

At the end of the day accurate results are what will keep Google going so I have no sympathy if you fall foul of the Google guidelines. In the long run it has to be said Google is managing to at least keep up with the more unscrupilous SEOs out there.