Last week I setup a Facebook poll to ask people what they considered to be the most significant change in search during 2011. This has received a great response, so here are the results so far (you can still take part on the SEOptimise fan page):
To recap on what these changes were:
- Google Panda (37 votes) – if you haven’t heard of Google Panda, I’m not sure where you’ve been. Myself and Daniel Bianchini presented at A4UExpo earlier in the year which may help to explain about the impact of Google Panda.
- SSL Search (17 Votes) – as mentioned in the comments, if there was a poll for the most annoying change this would have won hands down – with Google deciding to take away a portion of keyword data from logged-in search for privacy reasons.
- Social signals and integration (9 votes) – still debatable over social media’s current impact to search this year, but with the recent Google freshness algorithm update and the launch/continued push of Google+ it’s clearly something which should be high on the agenda for 2012.
- Google+ (2 votes) – Google’s most successful attempt at social media to date, Google+.
- Siri (1 vote) – thanks Nichola! If anyone else saw the keynote at Pubcon, they’d realise that Google is dead and the future is Siri. I certainly won’t be making any predictions like that myself any time soon!
- Removal of Yahoo! Site Explorer (1 vote) – this is big news for SEOs, as many of us have relied on Yahoo! in the past to provide accurate link analysis. Now none of the search engines provide full link data, leaving us to decide which link analysis tool to use?
- Roll out of Bing/Yahoo search alliance (0 votes) - of course, the increase in market share by combining Bing/Yahoo was announced last year, but the roll out of this has been in motion (or slow motion?) this year.
So which change do you think will have the biggest impact to search? The poll is still open too, so please take part…
Kevin Gibbons is Founder/Director of Strategy at SEOptimise. Kevin is well known within the search industry as a blogger for sites such as Search Engine Land, Econsultancy and Search Engine Watch. Kevin is also a frequent SEO speaker at a number of conferences including Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Search Engine Strategies (SES), a4uexpo, SAScon and BrightonSEO.
Hi Kevin,
(You see what ping backs do to the comment system :) – who says linking out is bad?)
Some great things to poll for here. Whilst I would love to say that the demise of YSE was of such cataclysmic proportions that I was instantly propelled to Zuckerberg status, I feel that Nichola probably did get it right with Siri. I wasn’t all that enamoured with the idea of telling my phone to buy my wife flowers… until I saw it in action. That said, I haven’t got a Siri phone yet because my wife and BOTH kids all shouted me down separately when I suggested the idea. It seems that siri will (in their view) take away a bit more of me.
Nice to be loved I guess.