Is Google going to add their own links to your web pages? A new patent indicates that Google might plan to change your web page content.

In the news: first evidence that Yahoo and Bing share results (with pictures), some thoughts about Google Site Performance and Google Crawl Speed, Google's John Mueller about the correct use of the meta robots tag and more.

Table of contents:

• Facts of the week
• Search engine news and articles of the week
• Success stories
• Previous articles

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,

Is Google going to add their own links to your web pages? A recent patent application of Google indicates that this might be coming. The name of the patent is "Enhanced document browsing with automatically generated links to relevant information". It is an update of the patent application that Google filed in 2006.

What is Google's patent application about?

Here's the official abstract:

"Additional documents are automatically located that are relevant to an original document, such as a document being read by a user, and also potentially relevant to personal information of the user.

The additional documents may be located based on descriptive information that includes personal information of the user and content information of the document being read.

The additional documents, or links to the additional documents, may be incorporated into the document being read. In some implementations, the additional documents may be presented in-line with the document being read, such as through an in-link link or text snippet. The user can thus be efficiently presented with additional information that is relevant to the original document being read."

In other words: Google wants to read the contents of your web pages and then might insert their own links on your web pages.

According to the patent application, the links will be based on the personal search history and the geographic location of the web surfer as well as on the contents of the page on which Google will insert the links.

How can Google change the content of your web pages (technically)?

Changing the content of your web pages is easy if the web surfer has Google's toolbar installed.

Google's toolbar does not only send information about every page that you visit to Google, it also allows Google to change the content of each page that you visit through the document object model.

If you use Google's toolbar then Google can add any content to the web pages that you visit and you wouldn't notice that the original content has changed. Note that Google could do this. That does not mean that Google actually does this.

What type of content would Google insert on your web pages?

Google might enter simple text links on your pages, they might link existing content or they might add whole new paragraphs on your web pages. Technically, all of this is possible. It's not clear what Google will do with the methods described in the patent.

However, since there are several documents about this topic, it seems that they are serious about this.

Google knows a lot about you and they control a lot of the information that we get on the Internet. Will they also change the content of your web pages in the near future?

Being listed on Google's first result page is becoming more important than before. Google can only recommend your website as a link if they know your site. To optimize your website for Google, use the top 10 optimizer in IBP.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com