If you haven’t yet heard what the latest Google changes are, let me give you a brief synopsis…

Google announced and began implementing several new factors in their list of ranking factors…

1) Real Time Search
2) Personalized Search Results
3) Page Speed
4) Easier search on mobile units

So, what do these mean?

1) Real Time Search
Basically, when you do a search on Google you will be given results from within Social Media programs such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. along with the other search engine results.  Here’s an article from WebProNews that explains the entire process in detail but know this, there is no doubt that from now on, your exposure in social media programs will impact your website.  This “change” by Google ensures the future of social media.  What you say and do, and what is said about you in social media circles can and will become a line in the search result pages.  So, if you haven’t yet begun the process of joining and participating in social media, the time has come to jump in.

2) Personalized Search Results

It used to be that if you had a Google account and you were signed in to your Google account and you used Google to search for something, your search results would be skewed to your history.  In other words, if your Google history showed that you shopped often at Sears online, then when you made a search for an item, you would be shown results from Sears because to Google, you like Sears so they’re trying to give you what you like.  Google calls this “Personalized Search”.

You could, of course, log out of your Google account and your search results would be different because Google had no history to tap into.  But those days are now gone.  Personalized search is now ALL THE TIME and FOR EVERYONE using Google.  So, no matter if you have a Google account or not, if you’re signed in or not, you will have a Google history and they will tap into that history everytime you do a search on Google.

This is a great feature for Internet users, it makes the entire search process faster, easier and more relevant.  But for website owners and marketers, it changes the game completely.  It means that we can’t rely on website rankings anymore for traffic.  Because, truthfully, rankings aren’t going to matter much.  After all, 10 people in the same city doing the same exact search can potentially get 10 different search results depending on their zip code and their search history.  So, what good is it to be #1 on Sally’s computer and #8 on Mike’s computer?

The game now changes from rankings to traffic.  The goal now, for every website owner and Internet marketer is to increase the amount of traffic.  Rankings still play a part of course, but we can’t rely on those rankings as much as we used to.

Here’s an article with some more information about Google Personalized Search.

3) Page Speed

Web Designers, this is for you!  If you’ve been resisting the use of CSS and other code enhancements to create websites, you’re in for a large learning curve.  Google is now using the load time of a website page as part of it’s ranking algorithm.  So, if your website page takes 5 seconds to load onto a browser and your competitor takes 2 seconds to load, well, your competitor will get some extra ranking points for that.

Of course, this is just one of over 100 ranking factors that Google uses to rank websites but it is a new factor.  It’s important enough for Google to add to their Webmaster tools which in turn, tells us that they are looking at it right now!  So, get your websites loading faster!

4) Easier search on mobile units

I said it at the beginning of 2009, that this would be the year that Mobile Internet would hit big in the US and it has proven to be true.  2010 will only be bigger and it will just continue to grow.  The impact has been acknowledged by Google as they are now providing some easier ways to search on mobile units.

They already have search by voice, search by location and now they’ve introduced search by images.  Basically, you take a photo of the item that you’re interested in and Google will “attempt to locate it and give you information…” about it.  They’re calling ig Google Goggles.  How this will pan out, I have no idea but it’s an extremely interesting concept!

All in all, Google has launched 38 different new ways to search in the last 70 days.  There’s no doubt that the “big brother” theme comes to mind but for now, as an Internet marketer, I have to change my game plan.  We all do.  Anyone associated with SEO and Internet marketing has to re-structure how they manage their website marketing campaigns if they want to work with Google and gain the benefits of that search engine.  After all, it’s being used by 74% of the planet!

If you haven’t yet heard from your SEO firm about these changes, shoot them an email.  Don’t call, they’re probably working 22 hours a day just trying to keep up!