Google recently announced changes to it’s indexing system named Caffeine, which boasts “50 percent fresher results for web searches” when compared to the previous Google index.

According to the Official Google Blog:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

We’ve built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

Google is constantly updating processes to performance, and so should every Real Estate website owner.  Here is a video update of the major improvements.

What are you doing to capitalize on faster indexing?

Not sure how search engines work? Here is a video from Google which simply explains the process in just over 3 minutes.

Google announced a display URL policy adjustment for AdWords campaigns.

The display URL (the URL that appears within the ad itself) shows potential visitors to a site where they’ll land when they click on an ad. For sites that sit on shared or hosted domains (such as wordpress.com) all ads will be required to display URL “that accurately reflect their destinations.”

Going forward, ads that do not include this additional information in their display URLs will be disapproved. A suggested display URL will be provided in the disapproval email notification, but we encourage you to proactively adjust any ads that you think might be affected by this change.

If you’d like to learn about this policy in greater detail, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Need help with Google AdWords optimization? Click here to request a Free Consultation.

SAN DIEGO – Nov. 17, 2009 – A policy change approved  by the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) board of directors changes the way IDX listings may be programmed. While Realtors may still only post IDX listings on their personal websites, they are no longer required to program the postings in a way that discourages some third party vendors, such as Google and other search engines, from indexing the listings. 

The issue 

In the past, NAR interpreted any use of listings beyond a Realtor’s personal website as “scraping,” defined as a third party taking data from another website. It’s considered scraping, for example, if a software program goes to a website, automatically copies all listed email addresses to create an email database. In the case of listings, NAR considered it scraping if Google or other search engines lifted the information and put it into the search engine’s database. Google commonly does that with many websites because it helps their proprietary search technology return results faster when a consumer enters search criteria.  

It was unclear, however, whether a search engine’s use of listing information could correctly be interpreted as “scraping.” Opponents of NAR’s policy claimed that indexing information about listings merely helped a search engine do its job; consequently, it did not fit the traditional definition of “scraping.”  

The technology 

Real Estate Website developers can program a website, and home listings, in a way that deters search engines from automatically finding the info and storing it in their servers. Conversely, websites and home listings can be coded in a way that makes indexing easier. Realtors who made it easy for search engines to index their listings had an advantage over Realtors who did not, since their websites appeared higher in search engine rankings. That most likely led to more visitors and possibly more sales.  

Prior to the recent board decision, IDX listings had to be programmed in a way that made indexing difficult, following NAR guidelines that called for Realtors to use “reasonable efforts” to protect MLS listings from being “scraped.”

The decision 

NAR’s board reaffirmed that Realtors may “not use IDX-provided listings for purposes other than display on their websites,” but it deleted the rule demanding a reasonable effort to keep “recognized search engines” from collecting the data.  

The new policy does not require websites to code listings in a way that allows search engines to index them; instead, it no longer prohibits the practice.

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