Google launches New Black Navigation Bar

Since June, Google is rolling out new designs. The company has added new flavors to its Gmail, News, Maps, Docs, Reader and several other products, with looks being common among all Google products.

The latest approach to add new designs is company’s navigation bar. Reports have confirmed that Google has plans to remove the horizontal black strip placed at the top of the pages with links to News, Web, You+ and Images.

Also, Google has shrank the number of links on top of the pages to only three, which will be permanently placed at the top of all Google pages for quick help. The next change is the addition of drop-down menu bar that will appear under the Google logo.

The new design reflects logo on the left, search bar in the middle, and Google+ tools on the right hand side of the page.

No certain changes have been made to the links that were previously listed in the black horizontal strip because they remain same to serve the new Google drop-down menu. The option of drop-down menu content is available to serve users even without signing in to their account.

Reports have confirmed that Google has started working on the roll out and we can soon enjoy the new set of tools. Google Technical Lead Mr. Eddie Kessler has posted the above news. Though no information when the change would take effect has been cleared yet, chances are higher Google will launch its design soon.

Kessler wrote: “making navigation and sharing super simple for people is a key part of our efforts to transform the overall Google experience”

Google launches a new anti-spam algorithm against content farms

Earlier this month, Google announced that they will release several new anti-spam algorithms this year. The first algorithm update has just been released and it deals with content farms.

What are content farms?

There are two slightly different definitions of content farms:

1. Content farms are scraper sites that aggregate the content from other sources to get high rankings for a variety of long tail keywords. These sites don't have unique content and they only aggregate the content from other websites to get clicks on their AdSense ads.
   
   
2. Content farms are websites that produce low quality content in bulk. This content is often produced by workers from low-wage countries. The main purpose of these sites is to get high rankings for as many keywords as possible to get clicks on the AdSense ads that are displayed on the site.

Sites that copy the content from other websites often ranked higher than the original site in Google's previous algorithm. That's why Google released the algorithm update.

Google's Matt Cutts confirmed the new algorithm:

"[I mentioned] that 'we're evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others' content and sites with low levels of original content.'

That change was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week."

Less than 0.5% of search queries have significantly different results

Matt Cutts also said that most surfers won't notice the change:

"This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice.

The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site's content."

The algorithm doesn't seem to be perfect yet

In an online discussion, many webmasters complained that their original sites have suffered while low quality sites still rank well:

"It doesn't matter if it is all 100% unique with tons of backlinks and really well laid out or simply an image. Everything got whacked.

Our out of date non unique ad filled sites are humming along FINE. So what's the message here Google? Write an in depth article that takes 3 days to complete and is linked to by hundreds of companies and gov agencies and loose all positions sitewide while our out of date halfbaked and useless content does fine?"

Should you change your web pages?

Google doesn't like spam. If you want to get lasting rankings on Google, you have to do three things:

• Create a high quality website that you plan to keep for long time.
• Optimize the pages of your website so that both website visitors and Google get what they want.
  
• Get as many good backlinks as possible to show Google that your site can be trusted.

Spammy SEO techniques often deliver quick results but they only work for a short time:

If you plan to build a lasting online business, focus on ethical search engine optimization methods. It takes longer to get high rankings with ethical SEO methods but your website will keep the high ranking for a much longer time

The content farm algorithm update was only the first step. Google will release many more anti-spam algorithms this year. If you want to be successful with your website, you must make sure that you offer a useful site and that you offer Google the content that they want.

Gmail to Use More HTML5 Features

Many of the upcoming Gmail features will use HTML5. Adam de Boor, a Gmail engineer, said that Google's goal is to make Gmail load in less than a second.

"If the browser supports CSS3, Gmail will render the pages using these specifications, rather than its traditional approach of using the Document Object Model (DOM). The company has found that using CSS3 can speed the rendering time by 12 percent. (...) Gmail will also make use of HTML5's database standards. Now, the e-mail service uses Google Gears to store mail for offline reading, but over time that will migrate to the HTML5 standards." Read More>>