Where do I see Google in 5 years? In the past 2 years or less we’ve seen Google do some change in design in search. A few examples are:

-You can now redesign Googles main search homepage with your own background.
-Googles search queries now include a left side navigation bar to personalize your search.
-Sponsored search results now offer ratings taken from comparison sites.
-Google will implement reviews in organic search results very shortly.
-Google implemented phone numbers in paid search to click and call.

While these may not be the biggest of changes, anytime Google does change something in its results, it is big. They are being more aggressive on trying to add more elements to search results. Is this the smartest move? If you ask anyone why they don’t like Bing too much, most people say it’s a little too crowded. Googles clean search page and search results have proven to be VERY successful. Do they really want to keep heading in this direction of search add-ons?

It’s hard to dictate where Google will go in the next 5 years in search.

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SEOmoz has a great video on what Google ‘May Day’ means for us online marketers and webmasters and how it affected web rankings web-wide:

Image Source: FastCompany.com

From a FastCompany.com article, Google states, “So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.”

It goes on to say, “…Google estimates the new system will result in “50% fresher results” than before. It takes a ridiculous amount of data–Google estimates 100 million gigabytes right now, with hundreds of thousands of gigabytes added per day–but it should make Google better equipped to deal with the future, as well as pesky upstarts like Microsoft’s Bing.”

If you haven’t noticed, there have already been changes in Google to the way they are displaying its search results with a new navigation bar on the left. Now, we’ll see how different websites are ranked with a new algorithm coming to play.

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In the Bloomber news article titled, “How Google Got Its New Look,” a great argument is made for Googles success. “Some in the search industry are skeptical of introducing such complexity to the results pages. “Advanced search almost never works,” says Jakob Nielsen, principal of the Norman Nielsen Group and co-author of the book Eyetracking Web Usability. “People don’t want to use a search engine. They want to get away from a search engine. That’s the reason the advertising works so well—the search engine is one site they want to get away from so they might go to an advertiser.” In other words, Google has thrived precisely because it hasn’t tried to envelop its users in a full-frills experience.”

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So, what’s googles bief with Pagerank? Well, thats another thing for us to speculate on but basically the pagerank factor has sparked a sense of MISdirection in SEO, and thats where the confusion begins for webmasters and Google. While people are focusing on pagerank, Google may see that as people focusing on the wrong things when it comes to SEO. It’s all about LINKS if pagerank is a true metric of authority on your website. Why? Does Google give any pagerank based on on-page optimization, from what I KNOW, no. There may be some sort of calculation on there but IF THERE IS, its minimal to where it barely counts. So, how does Google get you to focus on natural link building, content building, etc. Tell YOU Pagerank means nothing and not to focus on it.

{Read the post: Is the PageRank Drop From Google Webmaster Tools a Ploy To Get SEOs Not Focus on PR to Build Links or Do They Think It’s Really Irrelevant?}

In yet another post from WebProNews today, an interview is conducted with Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research.

“Norvig said at SMX today that PageRank is still one thing that is “overhyped,” and that Google never felt that it was such a big factor. They have always looked at all available data, combining every available signal and tiring to figure out the best way to combine them.

Norvig also said that it may be time for some re-branding with regard to PageRank. There may be a different term in the pipeline. “There’s a technical formula that’s PageRank, which is the way of judging the links between pages, and that’s just one component of how we rank the pages and you get your final search results. There’s all these other things that come in, but they don’t have a catchy name. So some people apply PageRank to mean all the components that give you the final ranking, and that’s where we get confused. So probably we need some other term for that…We’ll get some marketing guys on it.”

So, is Google really going to get rid of the “PageRank” word to come up with another term to mean what pagerank means today? Will google come up with another tool or metric to try and get seos and webmasters to focus on something else?

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“Recently, we announced new click-to-call phone numbers for local ads that appear on mobile devices with full internet browsers, like iPhone, Android or Palm Pre. This week, we’re bringing the same click-to-call benefits to national advertisers through phone extensions. Phone extensions allow you to add a phone number that will be displayed whenever your ad is triggered, regardless of the user’s location. Your number will appear as the last line of any ad text within existing or new campaigns. This enables customers to connect with your business by phone directly from the ad and can be especially useful if you have a call center to handle customer inquiries.”

To display your national business phone number on mobile devices with full browsers, follow these two steps:

1. Set up phone extensions and add your business phone number. Customers will be able to click to call your business directly from your ad.

2. Ensure that you’ve chosen to show your ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers in your campaign settings.

“You can review how many calls you’ve received for each keyword, ad group, or campaign from the Campaigns page within AdWords.

Select ‘Click Type’ to see which clicks resulted in visits to your website or phone calls.”

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This is NOT the first time we hear of this or that the New York Times covers a story regarding Google and their business practices regarding the indexing of websites. In September of 2008, I wrote a post on the New York times story, “New York Times Reports on PPC Arbitrage,” which also was a similar case of a website owner being un-indexed by Google for having a website which didn’t meet the Google guidelines because it was, in Googles opinion, an arbitrage based website only used for generating money from ads not giving any real value to searchers. Well…can’t we say the same about Business.com? A vertical search engine that basically runs Google Adsense to make all its money and if you really look at the business.com business model, it uses either Google Adsense or its own paid links to yield its results.

Should we be scared of Google? If we “compete” against Google or post ANY kind of threat which I dont see and believe sites such as Ejustice.fr pose any sort of threat, may that really be the reason for indexing? Is the do no evil really evil?

“Mr. Barella developed the site, including the search technology, with an investment of about €20,000, or $27,000, and help from a friend who is an engineer. Aside from a video interview in which an unsmiling Mr. Barella explains how Ejustice.fr works, the site is short on bells and whistles. Nonetheless, within a few months, it was attracting up to 20,000 visitors a day and selling a modest amount of advertising.

“We asked Google, ‘Why are you doing this? We have no more money,”’ Mr. Barella said. “They didn’t want to work with us, they didn’t want to help us, they didn’t want us to exist.”?

You can read the rest of the New York Times article @ ——-> It’s Not Just Microsoft Against Google

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Wired magazine has a post titled, “How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web,” which goes into detail on the algo, Google, Bing, etc. This is something that is constantly being worked on by these big companies who rule search, LITERALLY, RULE SEARCH. How crazy is that?

“This year, Google will introduce 550 or so improvements to its fabled algorithm, and each will be determined at a gathering just like this one. The decisions made at the weekly Search Quality Launch Meeting will wind up affecting the results you get when you use Google’s search engine to look for anything — “Samsung SF-755p printer,” “Ed Hardy MySpace layouts,” or maybe even “capital Burkina Faso,” which just happens to share its name with this conference room. Udi Manber, Google’s head of search since 2006, leads the proceedings. One by one, potential modifications are introduced, along with the results of months of testing in various countries and multiple languages. A screen displays side-by-side results of sample queries before and after the change. Following one example — a search for “guitar center wah-wah” — Manber cries out, “I did that search!””

Read the story on WIRED.com —–> Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

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“A Google spokesperson tells Search Engine Land that Caffeine is still live at only one data center, and says “we expect to roll it out to all data centers over the coming months.”

That’s a far different story than before. In early November, Google’s Matt Cutts wrote a blog post saying that “the full Caffeine roll out will happen after the holidays.” It’s now two months since the holidays, and Google is talking about Caffeine’s launch in months, not days or even weeks.”

Read the whole story @ SearchEngineLand.com —-> Google Caffeine May Be Months Away & You Can’t See It
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As search includes more and more of the social graph into its algo, big shifts will come into play in the SERPs. Nevertheless, the link graph, in my opinion will still dominate algo signals for ranking purposes BUT the social graph can very well dominate the first top results or maybe we even see Google display their results differently in the coming years to separate the social aspect of search, or maybe they are just trying to integrate as best as possible and becoming very much part of universal search as we have seen in 2009 real-time search integrated into Google via Twitter Tweets. The Google index is changing and you have to keep each factor in mind.

“This week Rand discusses recent changes that seem to signal the coming of another big shift in how the engines determine results. With the incorporation of social networks into results, increased personalized search, and even Google Buzz, the social graph is clearly becoming a more and more important factor for the engines. What will these changes mean for online marketers and how can you take advantage of them? Watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday and find out…”

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted in July that display advertising would probably be the next of his company’s businesses to generate $1 billion in sales. Analysts say 2010 is the year he’ll deliver on that prediction.

In display advertising, Google lags behind Yahoo! (YHOO), which had revenue of $6.5 billion in 2009 that was generated largely from its display ads. Google has tried to catch up in part through acquisitions. Two of the biggest were aimed at the display ad market: The company paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in 2005 and $3.1 billion for DoubleClick in 2007.

Read The Whole Story @ BusinessWeek.com —-> Google’s Display-Ad Sales Should Top $1 Billion
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What was most unexpected is last nights Google commercial during the SUPERBOWL. Way to make a statement! If you think or thought BING has a real chance at a serious share of the search market, they have a very steep mountain to climb.

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-Seventy-nine percent of 22- to 25-year-olds use Google as their primary search engine, compared to 63% of total respondents. Google usage is skewed toward younger demographics, high-income households, users with college and graduate degrees, and mobile Internet users.

-Forty-three percent of survey participants are aware of Google Docs, the company’s free Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentations product; 7% of respondents use Google Docs frequently and an additional 18% use the product occasionally.

-Awareness and usage is much higher among 18- to 25-year-olds.

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Read the whole story @ Barrons.com —-> Google’s Got the Goods in Demographics
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