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Google is a company that uses vast computer resources. But one thing they always attempted to do was keep their costs low by using primarily open source and building their own boxes. Now, the initiative has made the company extremely reliant on Linux, prompting one company official to say: “Everytime you use Google, you’re running Linux.”

You’ll often hear members of our open source team say, “Every time you use Google, you’re using Linux.” It’s absolutely true. Check a Google engineer’s workstation, and you’ll probably find it’s running Linux. Do a search on Google.com, and a Linux server will return your results. Ever since Google got its start, Linux has given us the power and flexibility we need to serve millions of users around the world.

Since I run my own hand-made boxes that run Linux, it’s an approach I can relate to wholly.

If you live in the US, you’ve probably already become accustomed to the “View Your Search History” link. Well, now the service is expanding to the UK. The service is opt-in, due to obvious privacy concerns.

The launch is part of a wider Google personalised-search initiative that the company’s privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, has admitted raises privacy issues. Writing earlier this year in the Financial Times, Fleischer said: “Personalised search does raise privacy issues. In order for it to work, search engines must have access to your web-search history. And there are some people who may not want to share that information because they believe it is too personal. For them, the improved results that personalised search brings are not matched by the ‘cost’ of revealing their web history.”

Although the company claims the service is opt-in, it’s on by default for most people with Google accounts.

Yes, SEO is getting tougher for everyone as personalization catches on. If you’re logged into a “Google Account” you’ll start noticing more and more of the personalization features being used. The amount of data Google can collect with their user’s logged in is quite high, so personalizing search by storing preferences will likely become a preferred way of “helping” with search. The Google Personalized Homepage is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what you can now personalize.

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For a period of time I’ve suspected that Google was interested in using data about your website’s traffic in order to help with scoring, and it appears they’re definitely able to do it. A recent patent application (number 20070088693), filed on April 19th., 2007 goes heavily into the nuts and bolts of how such a ranking system would work.

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All the time you hear the phrase “get natural links”, but nobody ever really explains what a natural link is. Natural links occur all the time. I’ve been managing a network for four years and I get all kinds of natural links from all over the world, all the time. What are some of the characteristics of these links?

• Natural links tend to point to interior pages on a website, not the homepage. It’s as simple as that. Very few natural links will just say “go to Joe’s website” and link to the main page. Instead, they’ll point at specific interior content.
• The anchor text can be anything. Non-SEOs are the ones linking to you, so expect all sorts of strange anchor text.

Google is always harping on the concept of “earning links” and earned links tend to be very specific in nature. The more quality content you offer (tools or text), the more likely you are to get natural links daily.

Blog search has been around for awhile, and the whole time I’ve been hearing how it’s supposed to be getting better. So far I haven’t seen any indication of this. The search has a primitive algo. I’m not sure if Google even uses their own search algo, but the one at Technorati is sad.

The only thing worse than the search results, is the small amount of traffic there. Nobody appears to be virtually no one using blog search except for the few and mightly earl adopters. And it’s a shame, because it seems like a great way to get new visitors to your website.

Sometimes I wonder if people really differentiate between blogs and “non-blogs” when they search. Probably not, as long as the answer they get is good. So I’m not sure if it’s a good idea that Google has seperated it.

Do you use Blog Search?

I’ve noticed recently that Google seems to have really speeded up the rate at which the add fresh pages to their index. This is the case, at least, with pages on a domain that already has developed some “trust”. On blogs that I update frequently the speed of indexing is nearly astounding.

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If you log into your Webmaster Central account today, you’ll noticed updated backlink figures. What the figures mean is up to interpretation, but at least you’ll get a look at how many links each page in your domain has.

I noticed a few technical issues when I clicked on the links to bring up more details. I’m sure they’re working on it.

I wouldn’t read too much into these link details. Even though Google says they pay attention to the nofollow rule, they still show the links in the backend. Now whether these links are “counted” or not is a whole nother debate. But for now, at least you can see a lot more of the links to your website.

Yesterday, I spoke about the need to increase your conversion rate. Google has announced a test program that helps you determine the quality of your landing pages. In essence, this is the quickest way for Google to help you increase conversions.

Take the guesswork out of landing page testing. Website Optimizer makes it easier to determine which version of your landing page users like best. Graphical reports show which page resulted in the highest conversion rate. Complete the steps below and sign-up to participate in our beta test. We can only invite a small number of advertisers at this time, but hope to open the tool to all Advertisers over the coming months.

While Website Optimizer is integrated into AdWords, it tests all traffic to your site – including traffic from your AdWords ads, Google search results and any other source of traffic to your site.

The Demo is well-done, and outlines all of the basic concepts of conversion rates and landing pages.

The Website Optimizer will give you a way to do Multivariate testing, using different variants of a landing page, to determine which one will convert best.

If you haven’t already checked this out, you should.

Well 2007 is under way, and Google is back at it. What’s been happening in Google that we need to be aware of? Well, Google has changed the way in which they “weight” backlinks, and they’ve been doing some massive “data refreshes” that make you hold onto your hat and go along for the ride. Google is changing how they index the internet?

What do these changes mean for me?

Nothing. In essence, even when Google makes changes, it doesn’t mean that you or I have to respond in any way. We need to remain calm, and analyse what’s going on. But rest assured, the core principles that helped build Google up into a popular search engine haven’t changed that much. As always the changes are aimed at “gaming” Google.

What principles should I follow?

There’s one main principle that hasn’t changed: you need to make your website interesting to web visitors. The ones who are interested will come back and visit, and they’ll also tell others about their stay. This will help promote your website in ways that will make it easier for you to get even more people. You need to have a usable website to expect repeat visitors.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.