Adding to the increasing complexity of the AdWords “Quality Score” algorithm, Google has announced that page loading times will soon become a key factor.

The intention is that sites runing advert-heavy pages will be penalised in an effort to improve the “user experience”. Google claims conversion rates are lower when page loading times are poor, as users abandon the site, a claim supported by many frustrated browsers.

Losers

Flash Sites and Image-Heavy Websites – as Flash sites tend to require more image requests from the server than a typical html site, they may be penalised under the new calculations.

Poorly Hosted Websites – the jury is still out on whether cheaper hosting packages result in slower server responses, but inferior hardware undoubtedly takes its toll.

Winners

Text-Only Sites – we might see retailers using incredibly simple text-only landing pages (or maybe defaulting to the low-graphics accessibility pages?).

Google have not (and will not) release details of how much effect loading times will have on the quality score, for all we know it could be minimal, but Google are generally very commited to providing the best search results for their users. There are several conspiracy theories and there is no doubt that any changes will benefit Google’s profit margins but ultimately those who abide by the rules will be rewarded.

The media has been inundated over the last few days with details of the proposed Yahoo buy-out by Microsoft for £23bn.

Google is said to be concerned and wants regulators to oversee the deal, as it would allow one company too much control over email and instant messaging accounts.

Over the last few years, both MSN and Yahoo have failed to make any major dents in Google AdWords monopoly of the search engine market.

Google still represent in excess of 70% of searches made via the internet, with MSN and Yahoo fluctuating between 2% and 10% over the last 5 years.

Various shake-ups and “aggressive restructures” have failed to improve the situation at Yahoo and the final quarter of 2007 saw a 27% drop in profits.

This is a potentially exciting time for pay per click marketing as ROI (return on investment) and customer service from MSN and Yahoo have been well documented as far inferior to Google.

The merger/acquisition may finally create a search engine platform that can challenge Google, hopefully providing a few incentives for advertisers to reassess the distribution of their search engine marketing budgets.

LandingNet await the outcome with baited breath!

Search Suggest isn’t exactly a new, Google have been using Search suggest for some time, however, Yahoo.com have now added this feature to their own search engine.

Search Suggest helps you when you type a query into the search engine by trying to guess what it is you are searching for by presenting those terms for you to easily click on to save you time in typing the whole term yourself.

Yahoo Search Suggestion feature can also be useful when you are not sure of a spelling. If for some reason or another you are wanting to find information on Arnold Schwarzenegger, Yahoo Search Suggest will present the name for you to save you time on trying to find the correct spelling.

Search Suggest also works well for Search Engine Optimisers as well as for your Pay Per Click campaigns as terms that would pop up in the suggestion feature are more than likely to be popular terms from Yahoo’s search history. Therefore, you can take the suggestions and impliment them into your campaigns as well finding new keywords in which to target on your website.