A minor change in Google's algorithms can leave out many businesses which do not possess a strong online presence, or rely on a single optimisation strategy. Being prepared for future alterations to Google's algorithms is crucial if you want your website to succeed on the SERPs.
Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are both considered pioneers of artificial intelligence and, not surprisingly, there is a large focus at Google on making their algorithm more intelligent. Machine learning implies recording actions, studying user behaviour and drawing conclusions from it. Users who install Google's Toolbar are contributing to the artificial intelligence development in Google, as all the searches made from the toolbar are recorded and sent to Google for further examination, in order to establish patterns of user behaviour.
Google is now stepping up their investigation of user behaviour in order to determine the site's popularity. Essentially, for any given search term, Google will study the number of users clicking on a particular URL. If thousands more users click on one page above others, then Google will increase the popularity of that page for the relevant keyword or keyphrase.
In the past, the concept of site popularity was purely based on the number of incoming links, and Google's entire business model was born from the idea where links were the determining factor on the equation - but all this has changed in recent years.
Google also allows the personalisation of search results depending on geographic region; this is known as 'geotargeting'. This indicates Google's clear intention to move away from 'monolithic results', a term coined by Google-guru Matt Cutts, towards a more customised solution that will make the user's search experience more democratic. The user will benefit from increasing geotargeting results, but those businesses relying heavily on links will experience a drop in traffic.
With the evolution of search engine optimisation now pointing in the direction of customised results, users now have the power to make a site more popular - or risk destroying a site's rankings if they repeatedly ignore a particular page. In this new era, it's important to remember that, however well a site is optimised, the achievement of higher rankings on Google universally is becoming increasing difficult as geotargeted results become more common.
As the Romans would say, 'divide and conquer' - diversify your techniques and don't rely too much on a single driving force to your site, whether this is in the form of links or otherwise.
