A programmer here just told me that Google has been experimenting with Digg style search results. After looking into it I saw that there is Google Experiment about this project. The functionality of the experiment means that after you run a search on Google, you have the option of rating each individual result by the following options:

Like It - Will move your result to the top of the page with a small marker. Your results stays at the top of the page whenever you search for the same keyword(s) in the future.

Dont Like It - The result will remain hidden when you search for the same keyword(s) in future searches.

Know of a better Webpage? - You can submit a url that is relevant to your search. Then it will show at the top of your searches just as the “like it” option does for further searches.

Each time you run a search for a previously modified result, your rules will stay in tact. You will have the option to see the results in their default order though by clicking a link at the bottom of the results page. You must also be logged in, to do this.

So what does this mean for those of us involved with SEO? I think a lot of this has to do with how Google uses this information. Do they plan to take the results from the people who are adding, removing, and modifying their results into account when doing actual rankings or will their actions affect them only. We all come across search results that don’t belong, and a feature that allows us to say we don’t like it, would be nice. I am concerned though (and this goes back to how Google plans on using this relevancy feature), that your competitors could go and purposely say that they don’t like your rankings and this hurt your overall rankings. I think of that as being like a competitor coming in and attempting to perform click fraud on your PPC ads with ill intent.

Of course this is still very early on and its only a test so I won’t overreact but I would be curious to see that if this implemented in the future, how it will affect the life of SEO’s out there like me. Think about it; They didn’t build a giant algorithm that works pretty amazingly just to replace it by some digg style voting method. I think they’ll just use this in tandem honestly.

Next week i’ll be heading to Search Engine Strategies in Chicago. I’m excited about the event and there are some sessions that look very informative and apply to a lot of what i’m working on at Scripps. I’ll be blogging for Search Engine Roundtable while I’m there which is great because it will keep me focused all 4 days of the event. Search Engine Roundtable will also be covering PubCon Vegas which will be going on at the same time so my guess is that there will be a lot of Search Engine Marketers doing the whole conference thing next week.

Below are the sessions that I will be blogging for Barry and the gang. If your going to be in Chicago let me know!

This looks to be a pretty good conference and these are just the sessions that I will be blogging. Again if your going hit me up and if not be sure to check out Search Engine Roundtable for full SES conference coverage.

Google just wrote something on the webmaster central blog about A Spiders View of Web 2.0. Most people at this point know that the search engines have issues with javascript and flash but there was a good tip on how ajax links and static links can coexist.

Here’s what it said:

When creating your links, format them so they’ll offer a static link as well as calling a JavaScript function. That way you’ll have the Ajax functionality for JavaScript users, while non-JavaScript users can ignore the script and follow the link. For example:

<a href=”ajax.htm?foo=32” onClick=”navigate('ajax.html#foo=32'); return false”>foo 32</a>

Note that the static link’s URL has a parameter (?foo=32) instead of a fragment (#foo=32), which is used by the Ajax code. This is important, as search engines understand URL parameters but often ignore fragments.

This technique is being referred to as Hijax

Until there are some better operations in place to crawl ajax it’s best to create a separate version for bots and also for people who don’t have javascript (mobile devices etc) for usability purposes.