When Panda launched it affected almost 12% of English queries significantly enough to be noticed. For most other languages the change will impact 6-9%. This most recent launch also includes some minor changes to the English version.

The objective of the Panda algorithm update  is to help in cleaning low-quality sites out of search results and improve rankings of high-quality sites. This focus aligns with Google’s goal of giving users the most relevant answers to their search queries and to do it as quickly as they can.

Internationalization of domains

These .anything domains bring unprecedented international changes to domains where ASCII, Latin, Chinese, Arabic and other character encoding will finally be possible.

Domains won’t look like domains anymore

The changes alter the familiarity of Toyota.com or Nordstrom.com domain names. I imagine future domains more like corolla.toyota, camry.toyota, shoes.nordstrom, and so on. Notice the missing “http://” and the “www.” For household brands, this shouldn’t be entirely difficult for consumers. However, who will have the rights to .cars and .shoes?

Barriers to .anything domains

Will there be a whole new land grab of domain names? I believe the market will heat up for those interested in charging direct registration fees. Some control is built into the $185,000 consideration fee and an annual maintenance fee of $25,000 per top-level domain (TLD). This slows the average domain owner from creating domains at will, but how many domainers will have interest in controlling gTLDs? I believe many will explore this option.

SERPs considerations

As an online marketer, I can’t help but question how these domains will rank in the major search engines. You can see from the following examples that Google.com is indexing (not necessarily ranking) content from many different TLDs. But top rankings in Google.com, Yahoo.com, and Bing.com are rarely achieved by non-standard TLDs such as .us, .museum, or .pro domain names.

Search engines look at TLDs as an indicator of which index (country) they expect their audience to react positively toward listings. For example Google.com is full of .com, .net, .org, .edu and other TLDs whereas Google.com.mx and Google.co.uk are full of .com.mx and .co.uk domains respectively. This isn’t an argument over whether you “can” rank well, but rather an observation of Google’s defaults.

Schema.org and indexation of .anything domains

Another recent announcement by Google, Yahoo! and Bing is the support for Schema.org standards. With Schema standards, product information can be published with meta data to help recipients understand and boundaries provided by the publisher. This helps to organize the information of the web. Schema may help in suggesting the purpose, geography, industry, local/retail or global interest of new .anything domains.

As domains becomes less standardized (.com for commercial sites, .edu for educational sites, etc.) the search engine algorithms will have to adjust. Moreover, domain length considerations will have to be adjusted.

Changes to domain names also affects pre-determined standards such as .com for commercial sites and .edu for educational sites. The search engines will have to adjust their algorithm to account for new domains such as .baby, .bmw, .family, .motorcycles, .travel, and .vegas as they appear online.

I would like to hear your thoughts about generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and the changes required by search engines in order for there to be visibility of the new .anything domains from an SEO perspective.

Keep in mind this is not a brand new garage project with big dreams of cramping Google’s style. Yandex is a mature contender with combat experience against the big G. Yandex has a few good things going, and a few that are just wrong. Let’s break it down a little.

The Good

Clean SERPs – I’ve seen Rand Fishkin and a few others mentioning this around the Web, and it’s true. Duncan Morris of Distilled was quoted in a post on Search Engine Land saying, “After a very brief play I’m incrediblyimpressed at the relative lack of spam and the quality of the results that are being returned.” He also said it may have a better engine than Google. Over the next few months we’ll see how robust that spam filter really is.

No Ads –- No paid results is a moot point to me. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that the plan will be to ignore paid search all together in the global filter. They will be there soon enough unless Yandex is going to allow purchased placement.

Site Icons – I had to include this. The site logos look great next to the results.

The Bad

A Global Results Mesh — With a little more time, we’ll be able to see where the pain points are with the global engine, but at a first glance I can say that I have a problem with the lack of country specific results.

For example, a search for “beamer” (a popular German term for “projectors”) returns results related to the car and projector alike. The car results are English while the projector results are German. Searchers are intelligent individuals, but they are also lazy and impatient. Sifting through different languages to find what they need doesn’t cut it. I can see Yandex splitting the engine to be country specific in the future.

The Yugly

Go Somewhere Else — One last thing. Aside from displaying monthly search volume on the SERP, I hope we all notice that at the bottom of the Yandex results, they are recommending that we search Google, Yahoo and Bing if we don’t see what we are looking for. I love it! Maybe it’s just my opinion, but that doesn’t sound like a great way to get your customer to keep coming back for more.

If you’ve heard anything about paid search inclusion coming to the global filter, or if you are seeing any other flaws in the results, I’d love to hear about it. Yandex is a great engine, and I hope they find success in the global market. Otherwise, I’ll have to practice my Russian.

Information on Baidu

Baidu is the leading search engine for websites, audio files, and images in China. The company offers a Chinese language search platform, which consists of websites and certain online application software, as well as Baidu Union, which is the company’s network of third-party websites and software applications. The company primarily provides Chinese language Internet search services to enable users to find relevant information online, including web pages, news, images and multimedia files, through links provided on its websites. You can read more about the full services available on the the Baidu search engine on China Analyst.com.

Baidu introduced “phonetic” or “pin-yin” search, which allows users to type in Chinese keywords using English alphabets. This feature is designed to skip the switching from English input to Chinese input, and for when the user is not sure of the written form of a keyword. Since there are many different ways to pronounce and state common words, and many different dialects, this was a huge addition for the search engine which greatly set it apart from all other search engines. Read more about Pin-Yin.

Baiduspider, the proprietary spider for the Baidu search engine, is load capacity friendly and is designed so it will not overload your site by visiting it too quickly. Unlike some other search spiders of the West, Baiduspider also obeys the Internet robot agreement. You can forbid baiduspider from indexing all or part of your site, by correctly setting up your robots.txt file to block portions or your entire site. Read more about how to optimize your Robots.txt file on our blog.

In addition to natural search results, Baidu also displays paid search results within the body of its search results. Baidu mixed its paid advertisements with its natural search results until recently when the search engine began to separate the results. Soon, all paid results will be segregated from natural listings (very similar to Google) making it easier to find organic rankings quickly, and more important to implement your SEO correctly.

Key Takeaways

What should be implemented in order to rank well in the Baidu search engine?

• Get back to the basics of SEO. Pay attention to title tags, meta tags, descriptions and keywords. Correct usage of H1 and H2 tags, alt tags, and anchor text.
• The anchor text for internal linking matters, so be sure to optimize it.
• Write the site in Chinese, not English. This includes alt tags, description, title tags, keywords, content, etc.
• If the site isn’t already indexed, submit it to baidu trends.
• Increase the number of incoming links. Keep in mind that Google looks at the quality of links. In order to maintain strong rankings in Google and acquire good rankings in Baidu, one must balance the two. Acquire good quality links in high quantity numbers.
• Having servers located in China helps the equation, since this gives credibility to the idea that the site is Chinese, and should be ranked well as a Chinese site.

Want more information on Baidu? Visit Filination.com
Read more about Google or Yahoo on our blog.

So, before you go global, there are three main areas to pay attention to: social networking, search engines, and analytics.

Social Networking

Just because Facebook, Digg, Twitter, and all the other “popular” social networking and bookmarking sites are big here in the states doesn’t make them a sure bet everywhere else in the world. I’ve had the chance to see this first hand. I have a lot of friends in Brazil, and no matter how much I try to convince them that Facebook is the best way to stay connected, they refuse to leave Orkut. A friend of mine has connections in Russia and says they cling to livejournal.com because the founders are Russian. Each site may have different reasons for gaining and retaining loyal users, and changing them to fit your SEO needs won’t work. Instead, change your SEO ways to fit them! Do a little research and you’ll find out how to best target your audience.

There are dozens upon dozens of social networking sites out there and popularity varies by country and culture. Make sure you target your social networks according to where you are trying to target your product or service. Here is a great outlay of social networks by country.

Search Engines

Staying on top of the global trends is essential when it comes to search engines. When it comes to SEO, some principles are basic and hold true to all search engines. However, with some specific aspects of SEO, knowing the search engine inside and out can make a huge difference. Google works differently than Yahoo. People in countries abroad may choose not to use Google for everything they do. In China, the leading search engine is Baidu. In Japan, it’s Yahoo. And in Russia, the search leader is Yandex. Knowing what search engine people around the world use can help you properly focus your optimization efforts for the specific country.

Analytics

We all know that information gained from web analytics can lead to on-site and off-site changes that will reap big rewards. Pay attention to what is going on with search traffic from different regions of the world. Decide what changes to make with the information you’ve gained from your analytic tools. Take into account the different avenues that visitors are using to get to your site and what countries they are coming from. Find out what they are doing when they get to your site. Find out why they aren’t behaving the way you want them to. A strict observation of your web analytics by country is sure to reveal opportunities for international growth.