You may soon begin to notice Yahoo!’s latest update, Yahoo! Search Direct, which, as of today, is still in beta. This new feature is very similar to Google Instant, with a few significant differences. The first thing to keep in mind is Yahoo! Search Direct is most functional for navigational searches (getting you toward the right information), or for answers on simple search queries (ie: “weather in San Francisco”). Upfront note: this feature is not on par with Google Instant’s ability to provide you with a full page of search results based on your initial query’s letters.

The first and most interesting and/or annoying change you’ll notice, depending on your point of view, happens before you type anything into the search bar. If you simply click on the search bar, Yahoo! will show you a list of the Top 10 hottest search trends. Some may find this distracting; Yahoo! is hoping searchers will find it addicting and come back for more.

Another interesting feature occurs when you type in just one letter. In the majority of cases, you will be shown a list of Yahoo!-specific sites on the lower left and corresponding links to the highlighted site on the right-hand side. For example, type the letter “K”, and you’ll be shown “Yahoo! Kids”. Type in the letter “R” and you’ll be shown “Yahoo! Real Estate”. You get the idea. This feature can be very helpful in getting you to a known website if you forgot the entire title. However, for most critics, this is simple self-promotion on Yahoo!’s part.

What happens when you type in a full keyword? When I typed the word “roses”, Yahoo! showed me the top 10 full query strings related to roses on the lower left (the list ranged from “Guns N Roses” to “Roses Bloom Twice”), and the top 3 ranked listings pertaining to the highlighted term on the right-hand side. This is very similar to Google Instant, albeit with a much smaller list of ranked websites. The downside happens when you type in a long-tail search term, such as “roses for spring”. In this case, you will still see the top 10 list of most frequent related queries on the lower left, but on the right side, Yahoo! has no suggested sites.

So again, if you want a simple navigational search, Yahoo! Search Direct lives up to its name. However, for a better built-out search experience, stick to Yahoo.com or your search engine of choice. We expect to see some changes forthcoming for Yahoo! Search Direct after initial beta tests are complete, but for ongoing information about how the Search Direct might impact your Yahoo! rankings, talk to your SEO agent today.

Contributed by Amanda Finch, VP Operations

Last October, Google announced it was rolling out a new product aimed at increasing search result relevancy to the user: Google Social Search. What is Social Search, what are the benefits to you, and how can you use it? Currently, the program is still in an experimental phase, but you can already engage and use this new product, provided you have a Google Account.

In fact, opting in at this point in the game may be a good thing for business owners and advertisers. True, Social Search is not widely used or even widely known about at this point to the layperson, but if you can harness this new service and couple it to your existing social networks, you may be ahead of the curve as far as getting your business listed, to your social circle at least, in a more pertinent way.

OK, so you’ve opted into the experiment and you’ve set up your Google account. Now what? It is necessary to add your contacts, chat buddies, networks, and media sharing or networking sites (including Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Flickr, etc.) to your public profile so Google can retrieve your contacts through various avenues. In addition to these contacts and networks, you are encouraged to add as many links as you’d like. Anything pertaining to your business or interests (websites, blogs, etc.) will give Google more to draw from when creating your personalized search results. Of course, you choose what privacy and security settings you desire, and the more liberal you are, the more Google Social Search will work for you, since Google will also figure out your “friends of friends” to add to your larger social network.

So what are these search results and how do we see them? Once you are opted into Social Search and have set up your Google profile and contacts, your Google searches will often include two results at the bottom of the page from members of your social circle. These results will be listed under the header “Results from People in your Social Circle for ___.” Google’s claim is while the other natural rankings are the most universally relevant, these two results will be the most relevant to you. These can include tweets, blog posts, restaurant reviews, photos, and much more that your friends have posted at some point regarding your search query. Additionally, if you like what you see, you can click on the top header to be directed to a full page of results solely from your contacts and sites accessed from your profile. You will even have the option to do a search among your social circle to find out if anyone you know has posted anything in relation to what you are looking for. This is great for on-the-spot decisions regarding restaurants, hotels, and other purchases, and will likely become invaluable for the mobile user for just this reason.

As you build your network and expand your social circle, your results will become more useful and you will notice Google Social Search appearing more and more often in your search results. However, it is important to note that the more people following you, the more traceable your actions will be across the internet. For the average user, this may mean taking a closer look at your privacy settings and making decisions based on your comfort level. For the advertiser, it will become crucial to building trust with your social circle by engaging with them and presenting yourself and your business in a favorable light.

Google Social Circle is an up-and-coming way to search, connect, and leverage your networking skills online. Get started now, especially if you already have spent time building up your internet contacts, and you will soon see that time and energy hit pay dirt in your search results.

Contributed by Amanda Finch, VP Operations

Google Caffeine is Here: Titan Growth^® Explains the Difference

On June 8, 2010, Google released its new indexing system, Google Caffeine, which has gone through rigorous testing within Google and on various data centers for the past ten months.  This long-awaited update brings a reportedly 50% faster indexing system than on previous versions of Google, as well as even faster search results for users.

The difference between Google Caffeine and “decaf” versions of Google is that now, web content is indexed in pieces, whereas before it was indexed in “layers”.  This new system allows new web pages and new content to be indexed almost immediately, rather than waiting several days or weeks as happened before.  In fact, Google reports there will be hundreds of thousands of gigabytes of new data added per day; this new indexing system comes at a time when online media types are changing and content such as images and video are becoming more prevalent.  This update also comes on the heels of Google’s latest “facelift“, where the Google logo was changed, more search options added, and most recently, users are able to change the image on their Google homepage (so it appears much like Bing’s).

For SEO Companies and their clients, this change marks a turning point in the way SEO strategies and site updates are facilitated.  SEO companies’ who actively feed data to Google will notice their changes will get indexed much faster.  SEO companies who understand these changes can better predict when their work and testing will actually pay off, and they won’t have to wait as long.  On the other hand, those who are not closely monitoring the changes this Google Caffeine update brings will probably end up losing some of their hard-earned rankings. It’s important to continually keep up to date on the ever-changing search engine optimization world.

For users, get ready to see new content and better, faster search results immediately.

Contributed by Amanda Finch, VP Operations