We SEO types rely on Google for some useful sets of data; things like search trends, keyword ideas, even insights into search intent. Because of this reliance we sometimes have an almost unhealthy interest in what they may or may not be changing.

All it takes is something like an algorithm tweak, or a change in how SERPs are delivered and the effects can be profound, for our data gathering and for the performance of a website. This is why today is proving to be pretty interesting.

The first item is about a week old, and Gary-Adam Shannon does a bang-up job of explaining it. In short Google amended their keyword tool, and now it shows measurably different search volumes. There was no announcement, it just got updated.

Now, let’s get up to date. A fellow SEO pointed out this piece by Peter Young. It touches on items that could (avoids getting hysterical) mean some hefty changes to aspects of the SEO’s routine. For me the most interesting is the suggestion that the SERPs might become fully AJAX in the near future.

Users might notice no change at all, or maybe get a snappier page with some functionality mods, but it could play havoc with rank checking software and analytics.

The mark-up/code of an AJAX SERP is reported to contain no URLs (at least according to “suzukik” in this WebmasterWorld thread). With no URLs in the mark-up the current breed of rank checkers will have nothing to report.

AJAX URLs are going to contain all the useful/readable query data after a # in the URL, and its that hash that is the problem.

The URL of the search results page is sent as referrer data to the site when its visited, and so can be used by an analytics package to gather that keyword data (its part of the URL e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=atelier+seo).

An AJAX SERP URL its likely to be like this http://www.google.co.uk/#q=atelier+seo, and as browsers don’t send anything after a # in a referrer string, all an analytics package will see is this http://www.google.co.uk/, so there’ll be no keyword data to gather.

Of course this is all hypothesis, based on conjecture and rumour, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored. The fact is that something is afoot, so its best to be at least a little prepared.

UPDATE
Google’s press conference to be shown live today at http://www.youtube.com/google from 17:30 GMT

The Bourne Ultimatum was the box a few nights ago (yes, I know this is 2010), and I figured that as I might be the last person alive who has never watched it I should give it a go.

Turned out to be *quite* good too, if you like lots of punch ups, hokey technology, and a vaguely interesting plot. It wasn’t any of these things that piqued my interest though, it was the idea that the guy is a covert operations type, who can generally ninja his way through life, BUT his Googling was pretty average, no, pretty lame.

Case in point, he uses to Google to find the company Sewell and Marbury, for some reason I can’t remember:

Luckily they were #1 so he didn’t have to dig much further. But if they weren’t #1 what would he have done? scrolled through 3 pages? gone to Yahoo!? added speech mark operators (“search query here”)? Added full stops as well (“search.query.here”)? started guessing at URLs and then doing “site:” searches? Rooted around in WHOIS? Got a proper spy to find them?

My point is that Jason Bourne isn’t much of a spy if he can’t even bother with the basic Google operators. The pay off is that we can all be better than him at Googling if we remember the basics:

• If information is not, and never has been, publicly available on the internet you’ll have real problems finding it there.
• The trouble is that you can only start to work this out once you’ve spent an age searching.
• SEO guys like me influence what rises to top of search results for commercial reasons (Jason Bourne can’t do that, again he’s rubbish).
• Shrewd use of operators and tweaks can help you root out what you want, all it takes is practice and trial and error.

There’s a smashing little guide here which will get you started, and this query should give you plenty to read as well.

Neilsen have announced that Bings search market share in the United States has increased in their market share by 51% in the past year.

From July 2009 where Bing had a 9% market share to July 2010 where it has increased to 13.6%.

Google meanwhile has decreased in that same period, although only down by 1% to 64.2%

Obviously Google is still the King in this area, although now that Yahoo is finally showing Bing results in the US, this means that Bing now control nearly 30% of the total market share.

Taken from the Nielsen blog

Google Analytics has announced a new sorting algorithm called weighted sort which weights the sort by the number of data points, getting rid of all those annoying 1 visit = 100% bounce rate visits.

To make this easier to understand they have given some examples In their post on the Google Analytics Blog.

When you have a lot of data within an normal account, you tend to get given a lot of information like the image below. We have all seen it, the single visits that have 100% bounce rate. A lot of the times, this does not help you gather the information that you need.

With the new weighted sort option, Analytics took into consideration the number of visits for each row bringing to the forefront the items you care about.

Weighted sort is also available on other metrics including Goal Conversion Rate and % New Visits.

AdWords have included a handy video to explain further.

The Daily Mail have started to recruit for an SEO Manager. This wasn’t found by any normal recruitment process, but by their Robots.txt file.

Whilst they might have gone down the route of Recruitment companies, LinkedIn or indeed their own site or paper, The Daily Mail have also placed a note on http://www.dailymail.co.uk/robots.txt which reads:

# August 12th, MailOnline are looking for a talented SEO Manager so if you found this then you’re the kind of techie we need!

# Send your CV to holly dot ward at mailonline dot co dot uk

This is a brilliant idea, and very imaginative from their SEO team.

Most people would not think about looking at the Robots.txt file for a website but as Malcom Coles pointed out it was once a good way of finding stories that had been taken offline.

Anyway, this story is all over Twitter now, so I guess any CV’s before the 24th August will count, but I have to say, this is completely genius and believe me, that’s not something you hear me saying about the Daily Mail that often.