Starting 05/16/2012 and rolling out to all data centers this week, Google has released search result update that is a change from Google being an “information agent” to a “knowledge agent”.

Basically if you type in a query like “Rangers” (which could mean a solder, a New York based hockey team or a park keeper), and a new information window will appear on the right side of your search results asking you which entity you meant. Select one of the options and your results will be updated based on your selection.

The Knowledge Graph allows you to search for objects, people, things or places that Google is familiar with such as locations, famous people, history, sport, architecture, geography, movies, art, poetry, astrology, astronomy, works of art and more.

Google is going to roll out the new feature slowly, but some users should begin seeing the feature this week. In practical terms, what’s going to happen when you search on Google is that you’ll see a separate “knowledge panel” on the right side of your regular search results that presents information about whatever your searching for.

According to Google, its search engine now covers over 500 million topics and is familiar with over 3.5 billion facts and relationship between different objects. Google crawls more than publicly available sources like Wikipedia and Guinness Book of world records. Google knowledge graph digs at a much larger scale because they are focused on comprehensive results and it’s based on what Google users search for, and what Google finds out on the web.

Knowledge Graph helps Google better understand your query in order for  Google to summarize relevant content around that topic, including facts, dates you’re likely to need for your search.

For example, if you’re looking for a scientist, you’ll see date of birth, career information, scientific achievements, education and family information.

 Google Knowledge Graph Summary:

•  “Knowledge Graph” is a term coined by Google for how it is building relationships between different people, places and things and report facts about these entities. Presented on the right side of the SEO results, it does not interfere with “regular” search results.

• Google picks out the facts for each object that are most sought in relation to that object (similar to their auto complete suggestions).

• Each knowledge panel has a “People also search for” area at the bottom which lists related people, places or things. Again, the relationships are determined by looking at search data.

During a panel Search Engine Land’s Editor-In-Chief, Danny Sullivan and Microsoft’s Senior Product Marketing Manager of Bing at SXSW named Dear Google & Bing: Help Me Rank Better! Matt Cutts announced that “in the next months or few weeks” Google is planning to release a penalty for over-optimized sites. According to Google they are trying to level the playing field a bit. Google is trying to improve relevance, and are also looking for those who abuse keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. Google has a couple of engineers on Matt Cutt’s team working on penalty algorithm right now.

Here is an actual audio from Google & Bing: Help Me Rank Better!

If you search for Cancer in Bing you will see a part of the health related article by Mayo Clinic and a link “Read the full article by Mayo Clinic” underneath it. Bing partnered with health content providers to enhance their health related SERPs

Screenshot of Bing Search Engine Result:

Screenshot of a Cancer page on Bing Health:

    Digital SLR stands for digital single lens reflex, named because these cameras use a mirror located behind the lens to reflect light to the view finder. When photographer releases the shutter, camera’s mirror travels quickly out of the way, allowing light from the camera lens reflect directly to the sensor and  blacking out the view finder. The view finder in a camera contains a prism that rotates the image around so that photographer can see an image right side up and transfers it onto the  screen where photographer can see it. Using SLR camera is not an easy task, and using one with automatic options defeats the purpose of buying SLR camera.

If you’ve never used SLR camera and you want to learn using one, or if you own SLR Camera and you want to test your skills, this SLR Camera simulator is for you.  Thanks to camerasim.com for offering this amaizing interactive SLR camera control. Have fun !

The SLR controls:

Lighting

Lighting is the single biggest determinant of how your  camera needs to be set. With only a few  exceptions, you can never have too much light.  Use this slider to experiment with different indoor and outdoor lighting  conditions.

Distance

Use this slider to simulate how close or far you are   in relation to the subject.

Focal length

Moving this slider is the same as zooming in and out with  your lens. A wide, zoomed out setting  creates the greatest depth of field (more things are in focus) while zooming in  creates a shallower depth-of-field (typically just the subject will be in  focus).

Mode

The exposure modes of an SLR let you control one setting  while the camera automatically adjusts the others. In Shutter Priority mode, you to set the  shutter speed while the camera sets the aperture/f-stop. In Aperture Priority  mode, you set the aperture/f-stop  while the camera sets the shutter speed.  Manual mode is fully manual—you’re on your own! Refer to the camera’s light meter to help get  the proper exposure. Although every  real SLR camera has a “fully automatic” mode, there is not one here—what’s the fun in that?

ISO

ISO refers to how sensitive the “film” will be to the  incoming light when the picture is snapped.  High ISO settings allow for faster shutter speeds in low light but  introduce grain into the image. Low ISO  settings produce the cleanest image but require lots of light. Generally, you will want to use the lowest ISO  setting that your lighting will allow.

Aperture

Aperture, or f-stop, refers to how big the hole will be for  the light to pass through when the shutter is open and the picture is snapped. Lower f numbers correspond with larger holes. The important thing to remember is this: the higher  the f number, the more things in front of and behind the subject will be in  focus, but the more light you will need.  The lower the f number, the more things in front of and behind the  subject will be out of focus, and the less light you will need.

Shutter speed

Shutter speed is how long the shutter needs to be open,  allowing light into the camera, to properly expose the image. Fast shutter speeds allow you to “freeze” the  action in a photo, but require lots of light.  Slower shutter speeds allow for shooting with less light but can cause  motion blur in the image.

Page titles have always been a very important part of Google’s search results, because they are not only a part of  Google’s ranking algorithm, but they are also visible in search engine results and they’re the actual clickable links Google searchers click to reach sites. Many webmasters are curious about why Google sometimes show alternative titles in it’s search results. A lot of SEO specialists are pissed about this, but generally everyone will benefit from this update. Google explains it in Better page titles in search results blog post and the updated Site title and description article in Google’s Help Center .

2  important factors for webmasters:

1. Google algorithms produce thee substitute page titles so that your web page is no longer constrained with using just the single title for all the different searches your web page ranks for. This has the nice side effect of generating the search result appear more relevant to Google searchers.

2. The alternative page titles improve the clickthrough rate on the results

The <title> HTML tag is still the main source for page titles Google  shows so Google’s advice about make them useful and appealing still apply

Onward search has recently released an SEO salary Guide for SEO professionals. Current market demand for Search Engine Optimization specialists continues to grow around the country. 

The SEO Salary Job Guide provides a glance at what metropolitan areas possess the largest number of SEO opportunities, which job titles are in the peak demand, and what is the approximate compensation for each segment.

Enlarge SEO Salary Job Guide

Enlarge Image

Google and Bing treat real=canonical tag differently. Google allows using canonical tag across large number of pages, while Bing recommends using canonical tag only where it’s needed.

Google

According to Matt Cutts Video, webmasters can use rel=canonical tag across large number of pages and point rel=canonical to itself.

”We built in support to make sure that that doesn’t cause any sort of problem. So I can’t speak for other search engines, but it’s definitely a very common case. Imagine if you had to check every single URL and then do a self check to see whether you were on that URL. If you were then you couldn’t have a rel=canonical tag. That would be a lot of work to generate all those tags. So for our part, we said you know what? Go ahead and you can put a rel canonical on every single page on your site if you want to. And then if it points back to itself, that’s no problem at all. We handle that just fine.”

Bing

According to the Managing redirects – 301s, 302s and canonicals post on Bing’s blog, Bing doesn’t recommend outputting rel=canonical across the entire site for pages where rel=canonical points to itself.

“Something else you need to keep in mind when using the rel=canonical is that it was never intended to appear across large numbers of pages.  We’re already seeing a lot of implementations where the command is being used incorrectly.  To be clear, using the rel=canonical doesn’t really hurt you.  But, it doesn’t help us trust the signal when you use it incorrectly across thousands of pages, yet correctly across a few others on your website. A lot of websites have rel=canonicals in place as placeholders within their page code.  Its best to leave them blank rather than point them at themselves.  Pointing a rel=canonical at the page it is installed in essentially tells us “this page is a copy of itself.  Please pass any value from itself to itself.”  No need for that.”

The following factors were deemed to be the worst things you could do it your site as relates to Google News rankings:

Top 10 Negative Google News Ranking Factors:

Check out Top 10 Most Important Google News Ranking Factors

See also Top 10 Negative Google News Ranking Factors

On September 21, 2011 Matt Cutts did a live YouTube video broadcast with webmasters.

Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google, answers user questions.

Michael Wyszomierski from Google posted the video.