Their latest update now will show you search results as you type and this has caused a little bit of “…the sky is falling down…” syndrome among some SEOs with them saying “it’s the end of SEO”.

The truth is that Google’s latest update is just an enhancement of what they have already been doing, which started with their predictive Suggest feature where as you typed in a query, they would list suggestion below yours.

As to the effects of this latest development from Google with regards to current and future SEO, it will have little impact other than causing more users to use the suggested search term but at the end of the day if the user cant find what they are looking for with the suggested search term then they will continue to refine their search terms until they do.

Ant that is the point of good SEO, you optimise your website to give what the searcher is looking for. This requires proper keyword research and understanding of the process that a searcher goes through to get what they want.

Here is a list of the 3 basic phases (simplified).

1) Fact Finding/Information Gathering – the searcher is just out to gather information about the topic.

2) Product/Service Available – Find what is out their that best fulfils their needs.

3) Product/Service Selection And Purchase – Choosing the specific supplier.

All Google is trying to do is to best match the searchers needs with what is currently “out there” on the web.

To get your website at the top you have to make sure you are focusing your SEO efforts on the right keywords and getting your website noticed by the search engines through link building.

There is also a third element that is now becoming more important to getting your site raked well and that is “Activity”.

If there is lots of activity on your website (news and articles being added) and there are people talking about your site (adding links back to your website from theirs) then Google and the others will be paying you more attention.

Without this activity your site will slowly drop-of the end of their index as more active sites take the place of those that stand still.  Remember, your site can only start to rank if it is included in the search engines indexes…

Go you your website and make a note of the URL. Typically it will look like this:

http://www.yourwebsite.co.uk

Now change the URL and delete the “www.” part so that it looks like this:

http://yourwebsite.co.uk

and hit return. What happens, does your web address go back to including the “www.” or does it stay the same?

If it goes back to www. then you do not have a “Canonical” URL issue but if it stays the same then you need to get it fixed.

Why fix it? Well, even though you know it is the same website the poor search engines don’t. They see it as two separate websites. And they will see it as something called “Duplicate Content” and will “mark down” the relevance of the site in there search engine algorithms.

Here is an article from a Google insider Matt Cutts, he is a top-bod within Google and worth reading. In this article he goes into a little more detail about canonical URL issues an answers some common questions. Matt Cutts

There is a simple fix but it’s a little bit technical and if done wrong will make your site inaccessible to web users. So before you do anything please make sure you know what your doing! (Disclaimer: You mess about with your .htaccess file at your own risk, I cannot be held responsible for any problems you inflict on your site!)

First you need access to your web server and to a file called “.htaccess”. You then need to edit that file and add some extra lines of code.

Here is an example:

ReWriteEngine on

ReWriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourwebsite\.co.uk

ReWriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourwebsite.co.uk/$1[R=permanent,L]

If you want to get a little more “techie” and read about more “fun” things you can do with your .htaccess file, then go here http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/mod_rewrite-tips-and-tricks.html#require-the-www-in-htaccess. It make for a relaxing light read for those who are true geeks at heart…

Using .htaccess re-writes you can fix other canonical issues, fix 404 page not found issues and a host of other SEO problems that could be plaguing your website.

Google has announced that it is now providing real-time search results. What dose that mean to you? Well, it means that Google are looking at parts of the internet in real-time so that when a web page, blog post or Twitter Tweet is made or updated, it instantly indexes, categorises and rates that page/post/Tweet and will serve that content up to a anyone who is using Google Search any types in a relevant search phrase.

So, is it really the start of the end of traditional SEO methodologies? Yes and No, don’t get me wrong, you still need to have your website optimised but now there is another facet to the optimisation process and it’s one that you cannot ignore.

If you want to continue to have your website indexed, listed and ranked you must start to incorporate Web 2.0 strategies into your online  presence.

And it is a must that you start to embrace social media and network sites into your marketing mix or you will be lost in the sea of new “web-data” that is continuously pouring on to the Internet.

Google and the other search engines are now focusing on new content, they want to provide the user the most current and relevant results that they can. Which means that they will be looking at all the new “stuff” coming onto the web first and then rating that against older content and making a “biased” decision as to which to show first. Newer = Better? Time will tell.

You can read more in-depth at Googles Official Blog.