Google released the first class of a series of six classes on July 10th, designed to teach users how to better use the search service. The first lesson of Class 1 was a short two minutes and forty-five seconds, but before I could watch the video I was required to take a “Pre-Class Assessment” of 10 questions with a few of them varying each time you re-open the assessment.
The assessment seemed to be a learning tool as well because as I was answering the questions if I didn’t know the answer, rather than clicking something at random I went to Google myself and tested the question out. Naturally, I was surprised to find out this jewel of information and of course, it sparked my interest in remaining in the course. Once the assessment is finished, the amount of questions answered correctly or incorrectly is not shown, to my disappointment. I can only assume that the “Mid-Class Assessment” and “Post-Class Assessment”, are both unavailable to me at the moment, maybe the same questions.
The first lesson, as stated above, was a short two-minute video with a text version available for the students that preferred to read and were followed by 5 similar lessons. Simply given as an introduction, the video defines the reasons Google is offering the course and how you can benefit by taking it. The video also describes that in order to receive the certificate at the end of the class you must receive an overall score of at least 70% to pass the class. The “Mid-Class Assessment” will serve as the mid-term and the “Post-Class Assessment” will serve as the Final Exam.
Google Penguin Update 3
Posted on October 8, 2012, by Lydia
In April 2012 Google did its Penguin Update Noticeably affected the rankings of 3.1% of all queries.
On May 26th, 2012 then rolled Penguin 2, affected .1%
Recently on October 5th Google released Penguin 3 affecting .3%
Saying it will further lower the impact that low-quality links have on a site’s rankings. The definition of “Noticeably affected” is decided, stating that basically means a change to the rankings of a site that is in the top 5 results. So the percentages above are, in our opinion, lower than the actual effect. If you consider two factors.
1) That a “query” is different from the “sites affected”.
a. The number reported by Google to be at least 500 times lower considering there are at least 5 sites above the fold for each query.
2) That there are sites that are affected that are below the fold (which is 99% of the entire internet).
So the effect is Drastically larger than Google is claiming, but it’s Google so who’s going to argue? I’m certainly not, I’m just going to be sure to include those variables in discussions with upper management about why our site was affected by an update that Google claims to only impact .1% when they say “Are we in that .1%, and if so why, are we doing something terribly wrong”. Then the explanations about how we were #8, but now we’re #13 for our biggest term and Google doesn’t consider that to be “Noticeable” or “Above the fold”, nor did affect all our “queries” in the same way, the majority of the long-tail phrases are fine. What an explanation, and whose word are they going to take? We shall see, yet again.
