Early this morning, Google Fellow Amit Singhal was interviewed by Danny Sullivan at Chris Sherman on stage at SMX London, the sister conference of Search Engine Land. Singhal discussed a variety of Google search-related topics. We were hoping to get a some in depth discussion about Google’s recent Penguin update, but apparently that wasn’t a major point of conversation. Daniel Waisberg liveblogged the discussion at Search Engine Land, and Penguin only came up briefly. Here’s the relevant snippet of the liveblog: Danny talks about Penguin and asks how it is going from Google standpoint, are search results better? Amit says that in the end of the day, users will stay with the search engine that provides the most relevant results. Google’s objective was to reward high quality sites and that was a success with Penguin. One of the beauties of running a search engine is that the search engines that can measure best what the users feel is the one that will succeed more. From Google’s perspective they use any signal that is available for them, more than 200 of them. They have to make sure they are accurate and good. They will use any signal, whether it is organic or not. .ditto202317910398599168{background: #CCC4A3 url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/370668450/new-version_24.jpg) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto202317910398599168 a { color: #000000;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @SEOsherlockSEO Sherlock“Google Penguin’s objective is to reward high quality sites and authors” Amit Singhal #smxlondon 4 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto202317846238339072{background: #F1F1F9 url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/377008634/elevate-twitter-bg.jpg) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto202317846238339072 a { color: #EE235C;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @ysekandYousafPanda and penguin update has gone really well… Can someone show amit the results for Viagra #smx 4 hours ago via Twitter for iPad ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto202319162910048256{background: #C0DEED url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/97682968/iwtwitter.jpg) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto202319162910048256 a { color: #0084B4;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @IrishWonderIrishWonder@dannysullivan please ask Amit if he has any Penguin recovery tips apart from removing links #smx 4 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto Google’s Matt Cutts also recently said that Google has considered Penguin a success, though plenty out there disagree. If you want Google’s advice on Penguin recovery, check out these videos Matt Cutts says to watch, these tips he endorsed on Twitter, and of course Google’s quality guidelines.

Google launched Search Plus Your World earlier this year. Most Google users probably just know it as Google filling their results with a lot more results based on social connections. A lot of users complained about it, but Google appears to consider the whole thing a success (not unlike the Penguin update). Google Fellow Amit Singhal spoke at SMX London this morning, and talked about the feature, and search personalization in general. Daniel Waisberg at SMX sister site Search Engine Land liveblogged Singhal’s on-stage discussion with Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. Singhal indicated that the SPYW is actually increasing search result clicks, and that the filter bubble is not much of an issue. From Waisberg’s liveblog: Amit says the key motivation behind Search Plus Your World is to have a secured search, it is the first baby step to achieve Google’s dream, and data shows that Google users like the personal results. It also gives the user one click removal from their personalized results. Google is currently analyzing and improving their personalization engine. Chris mentions that personalization can be narrowing, as it gives people the same results and they do not discover new things. Amit answers that there should be different points of views in any search results, and Google is aware of that and they balance between personalized and non-personalized results. Danny mentions a Pew research that concluded that people do not want personalization. Amit says “I am a scientist, when I look at researches I look at how the question was asked.” He discussed the specific research, and said that personalization is valuable for Google users. Danny asks: can you tell what percentage of personalized searches are clicked? Amit says people are clicking more than before on searches and it is lifting CTR from search pages. Chris mentions Bing Social efforts and how it is different from Google’s. Amit says: “the key challenge with personalization is that no one can judge a personalized search for someone else.” That’s why Google looks at the data about how users like their results. Search Plus Your World is the same approach as Universal Search, people have to find what they intend to find on their results. Bing, as you may know, unveiled a big redesign last week, which appears to be the search engine’s answer to Google’s SPYW personalized results. Bing, of course, has data from Facebook and Twitter, which Google doesn’t, which should be one of Bing’s biggest selling points, if you care about social results. There hasn’t been much indicating that Google will be gaining access to the Facebook and Twitter data anytime soon. The subject was mentioned briefly during the SMX London discussion. Waisberg liveblogs: “Danny mentions the integration Bing did with Twitter and Facebook, and how this might be good for users. Will Google do that in the future? Amit said that their contract with Twitter expired. Google cannot add Twitter and Facebook right now as their information is hidden behind a wall. It has been tough to build an integration in this terms.” Google’s lack of this data is extremely evident at times – particularly the lack of realtime search when big, breaking events are happening. The good news is that at least Twitter and Google are talking frequently. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was recently quoted as saying, “We continue to talk to Google frequently and on an ongoing basis. They are a company that’s doing several different things right now. Those conversations have a complexity to them that is different than our conversations with the company.” Who knows where these talks may one day lead.

This morning, Google Fellow Amit Singhal participated in a keynote interview with Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman at SMX London. The whole thing was liveblogged at Search Engine Land, the conference’s sister site. I’ve been picking apart some of the things Singhal talked about throughout the day. Here’s the rest so far: Google’s Amit Singhal: Penguin A Success Want To Tell Google How To Improve? Tell Amit Singhal. Google: Personalized Search Results Are Lifting Clickthrough Rates Google: Why Are You Asking Us If Your Ears Make You Look Fat? There was a pretty interesting part in which Singhal talked a little about how the company’s divisions work, with nobody really understanding everything the company is doing. Here’s the relevant snippet from Daniel Waisberg’s liveblogged account linked to above: Chris asks: with the scope that Google have reached, is there anyone that still knows all of Google? Amit says that there are senior executives that each can understand very well their own “entities” such as Search, Advertising, and other big groups, but no one understands everything. Given all that Google does, I can hardly imagine that anyone could understand everything. The search engine alone gets over 500 changes a year, as well as 20,000 experiments. Then you have everything else. Everything that encompasses Google Apps, Google+, Google Glasses, Driverless cars, and oh so much more. To get an idea of how much stuff Google really has, just look at this List of Google Products on Wikipedia. It’s big, and I don’t even think it’s complete. It’s really interesting, however, that a company can have such a substantial impact on so many people’s day to day lives, without anyone really understanding every element of that company. It’s kind of scary actually.

Google Fellow Amit Singhal spoke at SMX London this morning. Daniel Waisberg at SMX sister site Search Engine Land liveblogged the whole discussion. Towards the end, Singhal answered a humorous question from Danny Sullivan, who asked about funny searches Singhal had come across. The liveblog says: “Amit says that once he read a query along the lines ‘do my ear[s] make me look fat?’ Amit laughs: ‘why are you asking Google that? Go figure it alone!’” Judging by Google’s own search results for the query “do my ears make me look fat,” I’m guessing it’s because of the meme portrayed in the top three results, which all come from Cheezburger.com: But maybe some people really do want to know if their ears make them look fat. I guess Google won’t be getting into physical criticism of its users anytime soon, although, you can probably judge for yourself how your ears make you look if you fire up a Google+ Hangout. Perhaps there are some universal search opportunities for Google there. A couple of us here at the office tried to ask Siri the same question several times, and just couldn’t get her to understand the question. She can’t seem to distinguish “my ears” from “my years”.

Matt Cutts fields a whole lot of questions about Google. He often offers helpful advice via his blog, comments on other blogs, Twitter, and of course through his Webmaster Help videos, but Google Fellow Amit Singhal is the guy that leads the team that looks at all the messed up search results. Singhal spoke at SMX London this morning, in an on-stage interview with Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. While he didn’t delve into Penguin too much, other than to indicate that it has been a success, he did talk a little bit about dealing with flawed search results. Daniel Waisberg liveblogged the discussion at SMX’s sister site Search Engine Land. Here’s the relevant snippet: Chris asks Amit how is the evolution process at Google with so many updates; how does Google decide about which update goes live? Google has an internal system where every flawed search result is sent to Amit’s team. Based on that engineers are assigned to problems and solutions are tested on a sandbox. Then the engineer will show how the results will show after and before the update and the update is tested using an A/B test. They discuss the results and this loop runs several times until they find a change that is better in all aspects. After this process the change is send to a production environment for a very low percentage of real user traffic and see how the CTR is changed. Based on this, an independent analyst (that works for Google) will generate a report. Based on that report the group discuss and decides if the change is going to be launched or not. That’s how scientific the process is. As Waisberg notes, Google has recently shared several videos discussing how Google makes changes. You can watch these if you’re interested: This one has Cutts talking about Google’s experimentation process (among other things): According to Sullivan, who tweeted since the keynote discussion, Singhal wants user feedback: .ditto202344746532864000{background: #FFFFFF url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/151549713/500px-Flag_of_California.svg.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto202344746532864000 a { color: #038543;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @dannysullivanDanny SullivanThink you know how Google Search should run better? @theamitsinghal asked for advice. Leave your comments here http://t.co/fJFbe1QI 3 hours ago via Seesmic twhirl ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto On Twitter, he’s @theamitsinghal. Here’s his Google+ profile. Don’t forget, Google has a feedback link at the bottom of every search results page. Of course, there are always spam reports as well. Image: Amit’s Google+ Profile Pic

SMX Israel took place in Jerusalem on Sunday as a one-day event full of keynotes and sessions, led by Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land/Search Engine Roundtable. That’s a long trip for those of us in the states (or for those in many other parts of the world for that matter), so if you were unable to attend, you could hardly be blamed. But that’s what makes the Internet great. Attendees and presenters have shared info and commentary about the event for everybody else to see. I’m sure it doesn’t quite match actually being there, but it’s better than nothing. And it’s free. Some presenters have shared their presentations online. Here’s one from Aviv Manoach: SMX Israel 2012 – New is Always Better View more presentations from Universal McCann Search Here’s one from Mark Ginsberg: SEO Tools – SMX 2012 View more presentations from Mark Ginsberg Dixon Jones shares one here. Ben Druce offers a live-blogged account of SMX Israel here. “The SERP (search engine result page) scene from Google has always been changing – so their updates such as Search Plus Your World and Panda are not necessarily spoken of with resentment – Panda specifically is a good wakeup call to many for remembering that real people like fresh and real content,” he says, in a separate “highlights” piece. “However, the notion that Google is being unfair in their current practices is now coming to the forefront. The most common claim is that Google SERPS are showing Google Plus results on top of the far more relevant traditional organic sites, or even Facebook or Twitter results. The general feel was that Google is here to stay, and if we don’t like it, we still have to deal with it.” Nichola Stott has her own summary of the event, concluding that the speakers “seemed to be very much in agreement on the following points:” There is a very clear chronology of events, which gives a clear directional guide as to your future search strategy. Know your search history and you know your search future It is getting harder and harder to fake it – plus why bother? If you can’t deliver then what’s the point of trying to rank a mediocre page anyway? (Mediocrity doesn’t convert so well) “Treat Google well” to continue to succeed and you can’t go far wrong. {Quote is from Eli Feldblum, though I have paraphrased.] Gil Reich compiled a list of the “best lines” from the event, which includes: Roman Zelvenschi: Nobody knows how to pronounce my last name, but that’s OK, I rank number 1 for it. Eli Feldblum: Use schema. Do it now. Seriously. You have an internet-connected device with you. Eli Feldblum: We’ve reached the point where “normal” blue text links get lost in the noise on a Google SERP. Barry Schwartz: Google is recommending … Doesn’t mean you should do it … Just saying. Shira Abel: Google owns you. Get used to it. Marty Weintraub: Facebook owns you too. Marty Weintraub: Use Facebook to target businesses. Raise your hand if you have a FB account. Raise your hand if you have a job. See … Tomer Honen (from Google): We got better at Flash. Right about the time people stopped using it Olivier Amar: When you’re in-house you pay a lot more attention to long term. Because you still want to be here. Ofer Dascalu: Some people say “publishers and Google are partners.” My partners reply to my e-mails. They pick up the phone when I call. Michael King: When you interact with people on Twitter don’t use the same account that you use to Tweet SEO articles. That’s like trying to pick up a girl while holding a book called How to Be a Pickup Artist. Reich has a more complete round-up of the event here. It’s also interesting to see conversations that transpire in the aftermath of these conferences. For example, this one on Google+ including one of the presenters, Miriam Schwab, about the necessity of using Google+ for search marketing. Schwab said in a post, “Welcome to all my new followers since SMX Israel yesterday. Oh the hilarious irony that after bashing Google+, my community here grows. Love it ” Aaron Zakowski responded, “Hi Miriam, I enjoyed your presentation yesterday. But despite many people’s feeling about G+, all of us marketers need to be here b/c Google is making G+ a necessary component for online success. I predict that within a few months, G+ will be more important to most us than Twitter.” Schwab replied, “Aaron, I don’t disagree. Google has made Google+ necessary. My problem is that they are forcing us to join, and promoting Google+ results over other networks, even when the relevance is questionable. They are acting like a big bully, and that is not the right way, and maybe even not the sustainable way, to build community. We will be here because we have to, but will there be activity here? Will non-marketers join too? Possibly not, since they’re all comfy on facebook.” A pretty timely discussion, given the regulatory scrutiny Google is getting.

At SMX East in New York, Bing announced new Webmaster Tools features including a link report. Google also added percent change data to its own Webmaster Tools query reports. More on these here. Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee liveblogged a keynote with Yelp COO Geoff Donaker, who shared some interesting stats about Yelp. He says they got about 38 million unique visitors last month on the web site, they have about 13 million reviews, and they have about three million users per month using Yelp apps. He also commented on Yelp’s algorithm, saying, on a business page, recency is one of the primary factors. To quote Matt’s notes, "They want the most recent, trusted reviews showing up top." As you may know WebProNews attends a fair amount of industry events to cover in both video and article format. While, we can’t make it to all of them (we couldn’t make it to SMX this time), that doesn’t mean we ignore all the ones we don’t attend.  We have a new Events page available here (you will also see an Events tab at the top of  WPN that goes there). This page shows upcoming industry events that we’re keeping our eye on, and which ones we’re actually attending.  WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson also keeps a blog on the page. As time goes on, she will offer insights beyond her video interviews as she attends various events.  The Inbound Marketing Summit starts tomorrow in Boston. WebProNews is a media partner of this event and WPN’s Mike McDonald will be reporting. Then late next week, Abby and WPN’s Chris Crum (and the rest of our video crew) will be heading to Vegas for BlogWorld (where WPN is an official video provider). Shortly after that, WPN’s Mike Sachoff will be hitting Search Engine Strategies Chicago.  Check back often to see what events are on our radar, and stay tuned to WebProNews and WebProNews Videos for coverage. 

Google’s recent algorithm update, nicknamed "Mayday" by webmasters got a lot of people riled up, as many claimed it seriously affected their rankings, and potentially their revenues. Do you think the update has affected your revenue? Comment here. WebProNews spoke with Google’s Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced, and he talked a little bit about Mayday, saying that it was designed to try and spot signals of quality on pages and sites that would be good for users. He noted that the update was not part of his Webspam team’s efforts, but was part of general search quality, and that human intervention is not involved. It’s strictly algorithmic. More WebProNews Videos Note: Mayday is not the only thing Cutts talks about in the interview above. He also talks Caffeine and video sitemaps. If you have a response to any of this stuff, please feel free to chime in, in the comments. Cutts says auto-generated pages and content farms tend to get hit the most by Mayday. His advice to webmasters affected by it, is basically to improve quality. He says to make sure you’re returning the highest quality content for users. Stuff that’s not available anywhere else can be helpful – stuff that’s not duplicate or scraped or lower quality. Based on the reactions we’ve seen from disgruntled webmasters, I’m guessing that advice isn’t going to satisfy everyone. Here are a few samples of reader comments from our previous coverage of the update: "In conjunction with the drop in Google traffic, I have seen a matching drop in clicks out from my site to other sites. So it’s real, and it’s not been rosy to deal with." "Every time they make an improvement something else goes wrong." "Yes I have worked hard trying to rank and it keeps changing. Decided to go to other mehtods and forget about Google and their ranking." Even Cutts says you shouldn’t just focus on search engines. Bruce Clay, who runs a highly regarded marketing firm had some interesting things to say about the update (about 12 minutes into the video): More WebProNews Videos Gerben commenting on the interview at our video blog says, "Well, having a portal completely based on User Generated Content is affected by #mayday also, don’t think the explanation is completely correct." One reader offered some sound advice: "Never forget the first rules in SEO: It changes all the time. So, Google has made a change, which is not the first one. Do the basics right and you will have a sound long-term strategy." I don’t imagine taking Cutts’ advice about improving quality can hurt either way. The worst thing that happens is that the user benefits from better content. More on Mayday (including comments from affected webmasters) here.  Do you think your rankings have been affected by the "Mayday" update? Let us know.

Microsoft made some significant announcements related to Bing at SMX Advanced in Seattle. Later this summer, Bing will offer a redesigned version of Bing Webmaster Tools based on feedback from webmasters. The tools will provide webmasters with a simplified, more intuitive experience that delivers a comprehensive view of how Bing indexes their sites, a representative for Bing tells WebProNews.  Highlights include: - The Bing Webmaster Tools have been re-engineered from the ground up to offer more data, including enhanced charting functionality, through a modern, improved user interface. The new tools remain web-based, and basic functionality will be available through most web browsers. - The tools assess performance in several key areas, including crawl, index and traffic. Each area will offer granular data going back as far as six months with enhanced, on-the-fly adjustable charting, enabling webmasters to focus on the timeline trends that are most meaningful to them. - The update also includes a new experience built with Silverlight, featuring rich visual charts to help webmasters quickly analyze several months of data to identify trends and drive insights. Update: Bing’s Eric Gilmore tells us about the new Bing Webmaster Tools in the following interview: More WebProNews Videos  More here. Bing also announced social search, which uses public updates from Fan Pages and aggregated data from public updates to deliver real-time results. Doug Caverly talks more about this here.

WebProNews spoke with Google’s Matt Cutts out at SMX Advanced today. He talked a little about Caffeine, which Google just announced is complete, nearly a year after its initial announcement at SES, when Matt also spoke with us about it. Caffeine, it should be noted, does not change how Google ranks content. It’s all about the speed at which Google can index content. Cutts says you’ll start seeing fresher results. This is separate from Google’s real-time results. You’ll see fresher results outside of that box as well. He compared it to having a limo waiting for you to take you where you want to go when you arrive at an airport, as opposed to standing around waiting for a bus to pick you up (the bus would be Google’s old system in this analogy). Caffeine allows Google to do a larger amount of indexing, with the capacity to scale it up much more. It helps in letting Google add richer data to go along with other data, meaning not just links and anchor text, but any info Google deems useful. More WebProNews Videos Cutts also discusses the recent "Mayday" update, video sitemaps, and more. You can read more about Caffeine here.