What is Google up to?

DECEMBER

This week Google is rolling out an update that will put SpamBrain (Google's AI-based spam prevention system) to work on "neutralizing the impact of unnatural links on search results." 

Unnatural links, or Spam Links, are "links obtained primarily for artificial manipulation of Search rankings." The update is relevant to your Social Engine Marketing and Optimization in that search rankings might fluctuate over the next two weeks, but have no fear! -As long as you're not buying links or building a website for the singular purpose of passing outgoing links, that is. 

Google also announced the new Google Search Status Dashboard! Its goal is to make communication during the rare event of a system disruption more transparent (and quicker) than the current method of working with Site Reliability Engineers and posting alerts and updates to the Google Search Central Twitter account.

And last but not least, -drumroll please- Google introduced the Visual Elements Gallery: an illustrated guide to the most common UI elements of Google web search. The new tool explains what the elements look like, what they are called, and whether or not you can optimize your website for each. They have a great library analogy that you can read here.

Keep up with updates using the Google Search Central Blog (Click Here)!