The latest on web search

A new year, and new news on web search:

Thomas Register is now combining their multitude of Search-EZ sites into one comprehensive site called thomasregisterdirectory.com. They might be reacting to the changes in Google, which buried the EZ sites. The new site still has a PageRank of 0, so they aren't ahead yet, but give it a little time.

Speaking of Google, someone forwarded a great article on the latest changes in their algorithm. The change brings two new terms to learn:

1. Hilltop--the patented tool that Google is now using to optimize its results.
2. LocalRankings--I've been ignoring discussions about this, but this is actually the new tool that Hilltop uses to weed out irrelevant PageRank weighting.

The article says that only about 20% of a page's ranking is attributable to actual search-optimization, the rest is weighted by Hilltop and the more familiar PageRank. The ranking does, however, of course, depend on the right words still being there. Its just that your power to improve your ranking is limited to 20%.

Action item: Time to go looking for more incoming links from 'authoritative' sources.