Yahoo has today announced it will be including news results on the SERP (search engine results page), this could be the first move by the second most popular search engine into the field of Universal Search.
Universal Search has been used by Google for a while now, integrating relevant news, images, maps and products into the SERP. These results are usually more noticeable on the page as they have icons or graphics next to them, however Yahoo have chosen to leave them plain like the standard results.
Google SERP
Yahoo SERP
It will be interesting to see how Yahoo rolls out Universal Search for its other services such as ‘Shopping’, as this will affect SEO much more than the news results.
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A cluster of websites that engaged in a disreputable search engine marketing practice are called a ‘Bad Neighbourhood’. It is a known fact and I have mentioned this in my previous articles that links are very important items for high rankings, especially with Google. But if you have backlinks from improper places what’s going to happen? You are going to have very bad neighbours. It is similar to real life, e.g. if you choose bad people to be your friends you will be considered one of them by association.
Although it does not look fair to be penalised for something which you have not done, having links from bad sites is equal to crime and you can expect to receive a penalty from Google. It is fair because in order to guarantee the integrity of search results, search engines, especially Google can not afford to ignore the unethical practices or techniques.
If we look at this issue in Google’s point of view, we came to know that Google does not like the following type of websites.
- FFA e.g. Free for all links pages
- Link farms
- Known web spammers
However, Google follows some linking patterns to make sure you don’t get penalised if you have a link from a bad site by mistake. I will write more on this topic in my next post.
Nadeem
SEO Programmer
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