Two days ago Google released some exciting new search add-ons and changes in their algorithm. The search add-ons are explained nicely in the below video, so you can watch the video in your own time to find out more information. Today though, I want to focus on the algorithm update as I feel it’s much more important from a SEO stand point.

Google is incorporating user reviews and ratings into google.com’s search results, it cannot be seen in google.co.za just yet but I have no doubt it’s on its way. There are two sides to the coin here.

1) If analysing it as a single algorithm, it is not the brightest idea the Google engineers have come up with because it can be easily manipulated by companies. There are rumours going around the SEO circles that companies are even paying people to write good reviews about their products and give them good ratings as well. So the reviews may not always be trusted.

2) On the flip side it is Google embracing Web2.0 technology and not relying anymore on their incoming link algorithm. This move by Google also strengthens my belief that Google’s, Eric Schmidt must be taken seriously when he hints they are looking at introducing branding in their algorithm. One must look at this new algorithm as one small piece of Google’s massive puzzle.

So lets try and make these two side of the coins gel and become one, helping us understand why Google released such an algorithm…

There is no doubt that Google will still use their incoming link and on-site optimisation algorithms (together with their analytical analysis of traffic within a website plus the amount of rss subscribers a website has). With this new addition to their algorithms they now have a more refined algorithm. I’m convinced (I have no proof yet) that they will only insert reviews and ratings in their search results with websites that already have a good ranking score with their other algorithms. I very much doubt that they will insert every rating and review from every e-commerce/blog website indexed in the world wide web…

The next two questions we must be asking regarding Web2.0 algorithms are:

1) How soon will Google be able to tap into Twitter profiles and start indexing tweets, and placing an authorative ranking on Twitter profiles?

As you can see in the below image Google have begun a primitive index on Twitter updates. Will this evolve into something more spectacular?

2) Will Google be able to index Facebook pages and use the size of their fan base as part of their algorithm?

I question this theory in my previous post.