Tuesday 22 July 2014

Perfect Search Master in google

                                                         Search Master

Knowing the parameters Google uses in its search is not only important for SEO geeks. It allow you to use shortcuts and play with the Google filters. The parameters also reveal more juicy things: Is it safe to share your Google search URLs or screenshots of your Google results? This post argues that it is important to be aware of the complicated nature of the Google URL. As we will see later posting your own Google URL can reveal personal information about you that you might not feel too comfortable sharing. So read on to learn more about the Google search parameters used in 2012.
Why do I say “in 2012″? Well, the Google URL changed over time and more parameters were added to keep pace with the increasing complexity of the search product, the Google interface and the integration of verticals. Before looking at the parameter table below, though, I encourage you to quickly perform the following 2 things:
  1. Go directly to Google and search for your name. Look at the URL.
  2. Go directly to DuckDuckGo and perform the same search. Look at the URL.
This little exercise serves well to demonstrate just how simple and how complicated URLs used by search engines can look like. These two cases are at the opposing ends: While DuckDuckGo has only one search parameter, your query, and is therefore quite readable, Google uses a cryptic construct that only IT professionals can try to decipher. What I find interesting is that on my Smartphone, though, the Google search URL is much simpler than on the desktop.
This blog post is primarily aimed at Google’s web search. I will not look at their other verticals such as scholar or images. But because image search is so useful, I encourage you to look at the image section of the Unofficial Google Advanced Search guide. Google also shares some of their well-known parameters in their search protocol reference, so you might want to refer to it for languages, countries and other standard things.

3. Search URIs

3.1. Basic Search URI

https://www.google.com/search?
hl=en
&q=test
&btnG=Google+Search

3.2. Advanced Search URI

Google advanced search sends the following URI to the server. Here is the decoding:
https://www.google.com/search?
as_q=test (query string)
&hl=en (language)
&num=10 (number of results [10,20,30,50,100])
&btnG=Google+Search
&as_epq= (complete phrase)
&as_oq= (at least one)
&as_eq= (excluding)
&lr= (language results. [lang_countrycode])
&as_ft=i (filetype include or exclude. [i,e])
&as_filetype= (filetype extension)
&as_qdr=all (date [all,M3,m6,y])
&as_nlo= (number range, low)
&as_nhi= (number range, high)
&as_occt=any (terms occur [any,title,body,url,links])
&as_dt=i (restrict by domain [i,e])
&as_sitesearch= (restrict by [site])
&as_rights= (usage rights [cc_publicdomain,cc_attribute,cc_sharealike,cc_noncommercial,cc_nonderived]
&safe=images (safesearch [safe=on,images=off])
&as_rq= (similar pages)
&as_lq= (pages that link)
&gl=us (2-digit country code in lowercase) 
The department of Information and Computing Services for the University of California at Irvine maintains a list of country codes.
Note: Usage Rights does not seem to be available as a search operator. If you know of one, please email Joseph Becher at the address at the bottom of the page.

3.3. Advanced Image Search URI

Google advanced image search sends the following URI to the server. Here is the decoding:
https://www.google.com/imghp?
as_q= (query string)
&hl=en (language)
&btnG=Google+Search
&as_epq= (complete phrase)
&as_oq= (at least one)
&as_eq= (excluding)
&imgtype= (restrict by image type)
&imgsz= (restrict by image size)
&imgc= (restrict by image color)
&as_filetype= (filetype extension)
&as_sitesearch= (restrict by [site])
&safe=off (safesearch [safe=on,images=off])
&as_st=y
Image type, size and color restrictions are explained more in depth under the restricting image search results section.

3.4. Client Search URIs

Searching from Firefox 2.0.0.4:
https://www.google.com/search?
q=test
&ie=utf-8
&oe=utf-8
&aq=t
&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
&client=firefox-a
Searching from Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.11:
https://www.google.com/search?
q=test
&sourceid=ie7
&rls=com.microsoft:en-US
&ie=utf8
&oe=utf8
So far the only diference I can see is that the Firefox search allows images, where the Internet Explorer ones does not. If anybody wants to explain the query strings, or add their own, please email Joseph Becher at the address at the bottom of the page.

3.4. Miscellaneous Query Parameters

3.4.1. Showing Duplicate Content
Adding &filter=0 to the search URI will show similar results. This is the same as clicking the message
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the X already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.
that is found on the last page of the results.
3.4.2. Browse By Name
"Browse By Name" is a search method that first surfaced in the Google Toolbar. It was added to Firefox 2.0+ as the default search from the location bar. To use, it requires the following two parameters:
&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1
  

4. Basic Operators

4.1. + Required

Forces Google to include the word. Can be used with stop words, as in 'over +the fence'.
  

4.2. - Excluded

Excludes the word, ensuring that it will not appear of result, as in 'pig -bacon'.
  

4.3. OR Operator

Gives you a choice. You can have 'one' OR 'the other', as in 'cats OR dogs'. Remember that this operator must be in all CAPS. You can also use the symbol for OR, '|', known as the pipe.
  

4.4. " " Complete Phrase

Putting words in quotes talls Google to search for the complete phrase. This can also include stop words, as in "the search engine".
  

4.5. ~ Similar Words

Search for similar words, or synonyms. Searching search ~tips will returns results with 'help', 'guide', 'tutorial' etc.
  

4.6. * Wildcard Search

The '*' is called a wildcard. Searching for 'looking for *' will return results like 'looking for dogs', 'looking for cats' etc. You can also use the wildcard with phrases, such as "Los Angeles * jobs" to search for jobs in Los Angeles, etc.
  

4.7. .. Number Range

Search within a range of numbers. Searching for 'computer $500..1000' will find computers between $500 and $1000 dollars.
  

5. Advanced google operators

5.1. Time-based and Date-based

5.1.1. date: Last X Months
Search for 'new' pages Google added in the last X months, such as 'google date:3'
date: accepts 3, 6 and 12.
  
5.1.2. daterange: Between Two Dates
You may limit your search to an exact date of a "range" of dates that a page was added by Google. Dates must be entered in julian format.
Searching for 'google daterange:2453006-2453371' returns pages that Google indexed in the year 2004.
Date (DD/MM/YYYY):   /   /    
  
5.1.3. tbs=qdr: Limit Results by Time Period
With Google's release of Search options you can now limit your search results by time period. The format is as follows:
&tbs=rltm:1 [real time results]
&tbs=qdr:s [past second]
&tbs=qdr:n [past minute]
&tbs=qdr:h [past hour]
&tbs=qdr:d [past 24 hours (day)]
&tbs=qdr:w [past week]
&tbs=qdr:m [past month]
&tbs=qdr:y [past year]
As an example, Results for 'Google' within the last day (http://www.google.com/search?q=google&tbs=qdr:d) will return search results for Google from the last 24 hours (1 day).
Of special interest is the real-time search option. By adding &tbs=rltm:1 to your search URI you can choose real-time results.
For example, the search for Google results in real-time (https://www.google.com/search?q=google&tbs=rltm:1) will return real-time results for 'Google' from blogs and Twitter©.

5.3. filetype: Filetypes

Google will return files of this type.
Currently officially supported file types are pdf, ps, wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku, lwp, mw, xls, ppt, doc, wks, wps, wdb, wri, rtf, swf, ans, txt, but other are supported as well, like xml, cpp, java etc.
  

5.4. site: Restrict To Site

Restricts the results to the given domain. site:jwebnet.net will find all indexed pages on www.jwebnet.net, while site:jwebnet.net design will find all design-related pages on www.jwebnet.net .
You can also find your supplemental results using this query: site:www.jwebnet.net *** -sljktf.
  

5.5. cache: Google Cache

Displays the page from Google's saved cache. Other words in the search will be highlighted in the returned page.
Very helpful if a page is down or deleted.
  
Returns pages that link to the your search. link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google will list webpages with links pointing to wikipedia's page for Google.
  

5.7. related: Related Sites

Returns pages that Google thinks are related.
  

5.8. info: Website Information

returns some informations about the given web page. Typically website and description.
Note the information below the results on this search
  

5.9. define: Define Word

Searched for the the definition of a word.
  

5.10. stocks: Stock Symbols

  

5.11. weather: Weather Forcast

Returns the weather forcast.
  

5.12. music: Music Search

Returns track and album information for the search term.
  

5.13. movie: Movie Search

Returns all movies related to the search term given. Sample: movie:transformers
Clicking on a movie title allows you to pull showtimes. You can also find movies by locations: movie:nyc , movie 10015.
  

5.14. Flight Information

Search for flights inside USA using the airport code. sample: jfk lax
  

6. SEO-oriented Operators

6.1. allintitle: All Words In Title

Search for documents with all the words in their title.
This operator cannot be combined with others.
  

6.2. intitle: Word In Title

Search for documents with the first word after the intitle operator in their title.
  

6.3. allintext: All Words In Text

Search for documents with all the in their text.
This operator cannot be combined with others.
  

6.4. intext: Word in Text

Search for documents with the first word after the intext operator in their text.
  

6.5. allinurl: All Words In URL

Search for documents with all the words in their url.
This operator cannot be combined with others.
  

6.6. inurl: Word In URL

Search for documents with the first word after the inurl operator in their url.
  

6.7. allinanchor: All Words In Anchor

Search for documents with all the words in an anchor.
This operator cannot be combined with others.
  

6.8. inanchor: Word In Anchor

Search for documents with the first word after the operator in an anchor.
  

7. Google Calculator Guide

7.1. + - * % ^ Basic Math

You can use Google as a calculator for basic math:
  • 3+2 returns 5
  • 4-1 returns 3
  • 6*8 returns 48
  • 15/5 returns 3
  • 3^2 returns 9 (3 raised to power 2)
  • 5%2 returns 1 (the remainder after division)

7.2. sqrt,nth root of x Roots

sqrt(49) returns 7, if you need non-square roots you can use for example 3th root of 27.

7.3. sin, cos, arctan, tan... Trigonometry

Google calculator supports various trigonometic functions, expecting a radians value, that can be expressed also using the pi constant: sin(pi/2), tan (2/3*pi)

7.4 ln Logarithm, Base e

Returns natural (base e) logarithm: ln(e^5)

7.5. log Logarithm, Base 10

Returns base 10 logarithm: log(100)

7.6. ! Factorials

Returns n factorial: 3!
Numbers can be entered also in hexadecimal, octal and binary base, using 0x, 0o and 0b prefixes, for example 5 +0xf+0b1001

7.7. Conversions

Google can do conversions too.
7.7.1. Degrees and Radians
in degrees
in radians
You can convert radians to degrees: pi/2 in degrees or convert degrees into radians: 90 degrees in radians
7.7.2. Number Bases
in hex
in binary
in octal
in decimal
You can convert to each of the given bases: 16 in hex , 16 in octal, 16 in binary, 0�11 in decimal
You can also use 2007 in roman numerals (in case you're building a temple and you need to know how to write the year on it)
7.7.3. Distance
You can use 100miles in km , 1m in mm, but also 200000 km in light-second etc.
7.7.4. speed, time, temperature
Google can convert speed, time and temerature.
  • 100mph in kph
  • 1 month in seconds
  • 280 kelvin in celsius
  • 50 fahrenheit in celsius
7.7.5. Currency
3 € in $ or 3 euros in dollars
7.7.6. Cooking
Google can help with cooking...
  • 3 teaspoons in oz
  • 1 cup + 1 tablespoon in teaspoon

8. Google Image Search

Google Image Search has advanced operators as well. They can be selected at Google's Advanced Image search page.
8.1. Showing Duplicate Content
Adding &filter=0 to the search URI will show similar results. This is the same as clicking the message
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the X already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.
that is found on the last page of the results.
8.2. Showing only images of a certain type
Adding &imgtype= to the search URI lets you filter your results to a certain type:
  1. &imgtype=news (news only)
  2. &imgtype=face (faces only)
  3. &imgtype=photo (photos only)
  4. &imgtype=clipart (clipart only)
  5. &imgtype=lineart (lineart only)
8.3. Showing only images of a certain size
Adding &imgsz= to the search URI lets yout filter your results to a certain size:
  1. &imgsz=icon (small)
  2. &imgsz=small|medium|large|xlarge (medium)
  3. &imgsz=xxlarge (large)
  4. &imgsz=huge (large)
As you can see, using the URI, it is possible to filter the size further then you can with the options on the advanced search page. If anybody knows what dimensions the sizes break down to, please send Joseph Becher an email at the address at the bottom of this page.
8.4. Showing only images of a certain color
Adding &imgc= to the search URI lets yout filter your results to a certain color:
  1. &imgc=mono (black and white)
  2. &imgc=gray (grayscale)
  3. &imgc=color (full color) DEFAULT
8.5. Showing only images from a certain source
Add "source:life" to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive. For example: https://images.google.com/images?q=Winter+Olympics+source:life will search the LIFE photo archive for images related to the Winter Olympics.
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Thursday 17 July 2014

History

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all webmasters needed to do was to submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a "spider" to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[2] The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.
Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997.[3] On May 2, 2007,[4] Jason Gambert attempted to trademark the term SEO by convincing the Trademark Office in Arizona[5] that SEO is a "process" involving manipulation of keywords, and not a "marketing service." The reviewing attorney basically bought his incoherent argument that while "SEO" can't be trademarked when it refers to a generic process of manipulated keywords, it can be a service mark for providing "marketing services...in the field of computers."[6]
Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. Using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank for irrelevant searches.[7][dubious – discuss] Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[8]
By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, poor quality or irrelevant search results could lead users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate. Graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub," a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength ofinbound links.[9] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998.[10] Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[11] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[12]
By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. In June 2007, The New York Times' Saul Hansell stated Google ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[13] The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have shared their personal opinions[14] Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines.[15]
In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[16] In 2008, Bruce Clay said that "ranking is dead" because of personalized search. He opined that it would become meaningless to discuss how a website ranked, because its rank would potentially be different for each user and each search.[17]
In 2007, Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[18] On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links. Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that Google Bot would no longer treat nofollowed links in the same way, in order to prevent SEO service providers from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting.[19] As a result of this change the usage of nofollow leads to evaporation of pagerank. In order to avoid the above, SEO engineers developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated Javascript and thus permit PageRank sculpting. Additionally several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, Flash and Javascript.[20]
In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results.[21]
On June 8, 2010 a new web indexing system called Google Caffeine was announced. Designed to allow users to find news results, forum posts and other content much sooner after publishing than before, Google caffeine was a change to the way Google updated its index in order to make things show up quicker on Google than before. According to Carrie Grimes, the software engineer who announced Caffeine for Google, "Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index..."[22]
Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results.[23]
In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice, however Google implemented a new system which punishes sites whose content is not unique.[24]
In April 2012, Google launched the Google Penguin update the goal of which was to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine.[25]
In September 2013, Google released the Google Hummingbird update, an algorithm change designed to improve Google's natural language processing and semantic understanding of web pages.

Relationship with search engines

By 1997, search engine designers recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Altavista and Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms in an effort to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.[26]
In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web was created to bring together practitioners and researchers concerned with search engine optimisation and related topics.[27]
Companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[28] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[29] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[30]
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, chats, and seminars. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization.[31][32] Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website.[33] Bing Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit a sitemap and web feeds, allows users to determine the crawl rate, and track the web pages index status.

Methods

Getting indexed

The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and DMOZ both require manual submission and human editorial review.[34] Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that are not discoverable by automatically following links.[35] Yahoo! formerly operated a paid submission service that guaranteed crawling for a cost per click;[36] this was discontinued in 2009.[37]
Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[38]

Preventing crawling

Main article: Robots Exclusion Standard
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[39]

Increasing prominence

A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to most important pages may improve its visibility.[40] Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrase, so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic.[40]Updating content so as to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to a site. Adding relevant keywords to a web page's meta data, including the title tag and meta description, will tend to improve the relevancy of a site's search listings, thus increasing traffic. URL normalization of web pages accessible via multiple urls, using the canonical link element[41] or via 301 redirects can help make sure links to different versions of the url all count towards the page's link popularity score.

White hat versus black hat techniques

SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques of which search engines do not approve. The search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO.[42] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[43]
An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[31][32][44] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[45] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
Another category sometimes used is grey hat SEO. This is in between black hat and white hat approaches where the methods employed avoid the site being penalised however do not act in producing the best content for users, rather entirely focused on improving search engine rankings.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany andRicoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.[46] Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.[47]

As a marketing strategy

SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective like paid advertising through pay per click (PPC) campaigns, depending on the site operator's goals.[48] A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, setting up analyticsprograms to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site's conversion rate.[49]
SEO may generate an adequate return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[50]Search engines can change their algorithms, impacting a website's placement, possibly resulting in a serious loss of traffic. According to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day.[51] It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[52]

International markets

Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market. The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[53] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[54] As of 2006, Google had an 85–90% market share in Germany.[55] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[55] As of June 2008, the marketshare of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise.[56] That market share is achieved in a number of countries.
As of 2009, there are only a few large markets where Google is not the leading search engine. In most cases, when Google is not leading in a given market, it is lagging behind a local player. The most notable example markets are China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the Czech Republic where respectively Baidu, Yahoo! Japan, Naver, Yandex and Seznam are market leaders.
Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.[55]

Legal precedents

On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations. On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."[57][58]
In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings. Kinderstart's website was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%. On March 16, 2007 the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend, and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses
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