Major search engines, especially Google is constantly making changes to their search algorithms and how they work, to not only make their search results more and more relevant but also make it easier for users to search and find information over WWW.
Some of these changes are invisible to users, and a normal user will never find out what has changed in Google, but SEO professionals will see a significant difference in their rankings. These kinds of changes are named Algorithmic changes.
Other changes are made in Google`s interface that effect the search user directly. These changes are made at the front end level and since they don’t affect the search engine rankings of a website, therefore webmasters and SEOs don’t really care about them.
One Word Search
Recent data stats from Experian hitwise show that the number of times a single word is searched on Google has raised from 20.3% in 2009 to 27.8% in 2011. Only in Sept-Oct 2011 this ratio increased by 3% which shows the significant interest of people in searching single words on Google. Many SEO Professionals are found researching about this trend; some of them claim it to be happening because of the recent release of Google Instant which makes search engine do more with less input.
So far this matter is inconclusive, but still if you are a serious SEO professional and looking to stay in it for a longer period of time, than you must realize that something is definitely happening at Google`s end, and long tail keywords might get ditched in near future. Hence you must start creating content for short/single words keywords too.
Local Search
The second thing that is looking to go under a drastic change in year 2012 is that now much more people use internet search, mainly Google to search for local businesses and services. People use Google to find out the nearest restaurants, bars, clubs, car rentals, and many other services. One survey from Pew Internet shows that people use Google to find more information than then they use news papers or TV ads. Which shows us exactly how much power this local search has and its importance will keep on increasing day by day.
Conclusion
Even though both of these changes are not yet confirmed by Google and it is not guaranteed that this will effect website`s rankings on Search Engines but the trends show that there are certainly some changes in pipeline that Google is going to implement very soon, and you as a professional SEO, must take them into account because it may change the face of the SEO industry altogether in coming near future.
