Have you seen effects from Google’s most recent algorithm changes? Let us know in the comments.

Some have apparently already been feeling the effects of Google’s algorithmic early this year. Webmasters were quick to point the finger at the old panda, but Google assures us that this is not the case. A spokesperson for the company told WebProNews there have been no Panda updates in 2012 so far (though I’d expect one to launch before too long).

By the way, now that 2011 is over, do you think Panda has done a good job at cleaning up search results?

In the latest edition of the series, on the company’s Inside Search Blog, they highlight 21 changes made in the month of December. The list goes as follows:

• Image Search landing page quality signals. [launch codename “simple”] This is an improvement that analyzes various landing page signals for Image Search. We want to make sure that not only are we showing you the most relevant images, but we are also linking to the highest quality source pages.
• More relevant sitelinks. [launch codename “concepts”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] We improved our algorithm for picking sitelinks. The result is more relevant sitelinks; for example, we may show sitelinks specific to your metropolitan region, which you can control with your location setting.
• Soft 404 Detection. Web servers generally return the 404 status code when someone requests a page that doesn’t exist. However, some sites are configured to return other status codes, even though the page content might explain that the page was not found. We call these soft 404s (or “crypto” 404s) and they can be problematic for search engines because we aren’t sure if we should ignore the pages. This change is an improvement to how we detect soft 404s, especially in Russian, German and Spanish. For all you webmasters out there, the best practice is still to always use the correct response code.
• More accurate country-restricted searches. [launch codename “greencr”] On domains other than .com, users have the option to see only results from their particular country. This is a new algorithm that uses several signals to better determine where web documents are from, improving the accuracy of this feature.
• More rich snippets. We improved our process for detecting sites that qualify for shopping, recipe and review rich snippets. As a result, you should start seeing more sites with rich snippets in search results.
• Better infrastructure for autocomplete. This is an infrastructure change to improve how our autocomplete algorithm handles spelling corrections for query prefixes (the beginning part of a search).
• Better spam detection in Image Search. [launch codename “leaf”] This change improves our spam detection in Image Search by extending algorithms we already use for our main search results.
• Google Instant enhancements for Japanese. For languages that use non-Latin characters, many users use a special IME (Input Method Editor) to enter queries. This change works with browsers that are IME-aware to better handle Japanese queries in Google Instant.
• More accurate byline dates. [launch codename “foby”] We made a few improvements to how we determine what date to associate with a document. As a result, you’ll see more accurate dates annotating search results.
• Live results for NFL and college football. [project codename “Live Results”] We’ve added new live results for NFL.com and ESPN’s NCAA Football results. These results now provide the latest scores, schedules and standings for your favorite football teams.
• Improved dataset for related queries. We are now using an improved dataset on term relationships to find related queries. We sometimes include results for queries that are related to your original search, and this improvement leads to results from more relevant related queries.
• Related query improvements. [launch codename “lyndsy”] Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are related to the original query but have fewer words. We made several changes to our algorithms to make them more conservative and less likely to introduce results without query words.
• Better lyrics results. [launch codename “baschi”, project codename “Contra”] This change improves our result quality for lyrics searches.
• Tweak to +1 button on results page. As part of our continued effort to deliver a beautifully simple user experience across Google products, we’ve made a subtle tweak to how the +1 button appears on the results page. Now the +1 button will only appear when you hover over a result or when the result has already been +1’d.
• Better spell correction in Vietnamese. [project codename “Pho Viet”] We launched a new Vietnamese spelling model. This will help give more accurate spelling predictions for Vietnamese queries.
• Upcoming events at venues. We’ve improved the recently released places panel for event venues. For major venues, we now show up to three upcoming events on the right of the page. Try it for [staples center los angeles] or [paradise rock club boston].
• Improvements to image size signal. [launch codename “matter”] This is an improvement to how we use the size of images as a ranking signal in Image Search. With this change, you’ll tend to see images with larger full-size versions.
• Improved Hebrew synonyms. [launch codename “SweatNovember”, project codename “Synonyms”] This update refines how we handle Hebrew synonyms across multiple languages. Context matters a lot for translation, so this change prevents us from using translated synonyms that are not actually relevant to the query context.
• Safer searching. [launch codename “Hoengg”, project codename "SafeSearch"] We updated our SafeSearch tool to provide better filtering for certain queries when strict SafeSearch is enabled.
• Encrypted search available on new regional domains. Google now offers encrypted search by default on google.com for signed-in users, but it’s not the default on our other regional domains (eg: google.fr for France). Now users in the UK, Germany and France can opt in to encrypted search by navigating directly to an SSL version of Google Search on their respective regional domains: https://www.google.co.uk, https://www.google.de andhttps://www.google.fr.
• Faster mobile browsing. [launch codename “old possum”, project codename “Skip Redirect”] Many websites redirect smartphone users to another page that is optimized for smartphone browsers. This change uses the final smartphone destination url in our mobile search results, so you can bypass all the redirects and load the target page faster.

The image search landing page quality signal change is quite interesting. We ran a great article on optimizing for image search by Michael Gray last year, and that’s full of tips to consider for this less talked about element of SEO, but the adjustments, as unspecific as they may be, reflect Google’s Panda-style focus on quality in search results. This, to me, is saying they’re applying same kind of thinking they do with regular web search to other parts of Google, more than ever before.

Here’s the list of questions Google has presented in the past to consider asking yourself, when evaluating quality.

Note that “better spam detection for image search” is also on the list.

Also note the codenames used throughout the list. Most you probably won’t have to remember like Panda and Caffeine, but it’s still nice to have something to reference for the future.

With regards to the “more rich snippets” item on the list, you may want to check out the series of videos Google recently put out on how to do rich snippets.

Tags – Keyword, Abstract, Description and Title tags must be handled very carefully. Using irrelevant keywords is considered to be spamming. Avoid repetition of keywords and there shouldn’t be more than 20 keywords in a keyword tag. Abstract Tags are quite similar to Keyword tags. It is used to increase keyword density in Meta tags. However, the Abstract tag must not be overloaded with the keyword. In search engines, the sentence that is featured is the Meta description tag. Hence, this should target the keywords. The description that the visitors see on the browser is the Title tag. It should be different for every page.

Content – In an attempt to increase keyword density, the quality of content is compromised, which would adversely affect future search listings of the website or webpage.

Backlinks – People are under the impression that only the quantity of backlinks matter. However, quality also matter, Excessive number of backlinks and low quality can lead to de-indexing of a website in extreme cases.

On Thanksgiving Day, during the Lions vs. Packers game, Google aired a commercial for their Google+ social network. The title of the commercial was “Google+: Sharing but like real life”.

The advertisement plays up that it’s different from Facebook, allowing you to organize your family, friends, and random people you know into various Circles. You can check it out below.

What did you think of the commercial? Tell us what you thought below.

Personally, I thought it was a little dry compared to some of their other commercials, like the ones they did for Google Chrome.

At the Hong Kong event (taking place last night for those of us in the West), the new Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS was unveiled, as was its flagship device, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (previously referred to as the Nexus Prime).

The Galaxy Nexus (seen above), is the new member of the Google phone lineage. It lives up to many of the specs that have been rumored for some time including a 4.65 inch screen, 1GB RAM and a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor.

That giant screen is a Super AMOLED true HD experience – running at 1280×720 resolution. By all hands-on accounts, it’s one of the most gorgeous looking screens on the market.

As far as the camera goes, it’s a 5 megapixel device with an instant shutter (like the iPhones 4S). You can shoot 1080p HD video with the Galaxy Nexus.

It’s a thin phone, measuring 8.84mm thick (and 4.29 mm bezel) and has a new, sleek feel as there are no mechanical buttons – everything is built into the touch surface, including the home button. The device comes equipped with NFC capabilities, which not only sets the stage for mobile payments but allows for the Android Beam feature – a way for users to share apps, videos, contacts and more by “bumping” their Nexus with another Nexus. It’s also a 4G phone, as promised.

But one of the biggest draws of the Galaxy Nexus is in the software – the all new Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Google sought to create an OS that would function equally as well of tablets as mobile devices, a Gingerbread-Honeycomb on steroids.

“This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe,” says Google product manager Evelyn Kao.

There’s a chance that your Google experience will be slower with SSL because the computer your’e using has to establish a secure connection with Google. This is interesting, considering that Google has put so much effort into speeding things up.

It’s worth noting that you can just go to https://www.google.com when you’re signed out, and still use encrypted search.

Naturally, webmasters and SEOs are contemplating the effects this will have on search engine optimization and analytics.

Sites visited from Google’s organic listings will be able to tell that the traffic is coming from Google, but they won’t be able to receive info about each individual query. They will, however, receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to the site for each of the past 30 days in Webmaster Tools.

“This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic,” says Kao. “If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”

“When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google ‘organic’ search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site,” says Amy Chang on the Google Analytics blog. “Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google ‘cpc’.”

“We are still measuring all SEO traffic. You will still be able to see your conversion rates, segmentations, and more,” she adds. “To help you better identify the signed in user organic search visits, we created the token ‘not provided)’ within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed in user visits will be affected. Note that ‘cpc’ paid search data is not affected.”

Google is making the encrypted search available on all of its search properties except for Maps.

Granted, you don’t need to be a Google+ user (at least at this point) to have a Google Profile, and Profiles existed before Google+, but in Google+, the Profile is essentially the equivalent of the Facebook Wall, and authorship markup places them right in search results with nice little clickable graphics.

In a recent article, we looked at a video Google released discussing how to implement authorship markup on your site. They’ve now released another one offering a few quick steps to get it to work when you don’t necessarily control the CMS of the site you’re writing content for. This way, even guest authors can add it.

Google calls it, “a way to make it even easier to annotate your pages and show that there is authorship.”

Here are the basic steps:

1. Find your Google Profile2. Add “?rel=author” on the end of your Google Profile URL

3. Wrap that in an a tag – <a href=”that url here”

4. Google wants you to use something like “+Matt Cutts” as the anchor text.

5. Insert that on your article, and point your Google Profile back to the site

“If I can’t control the attributes, I can still add a link to this special URL,” says Cutts, and it’s really as simple as that.

Delegated administration was revealed in May. The feature essentially lets primary admins offer other users specific admin controls.

Multi-domain support was first announced in June as a new admin control that lets organizations with two or more domains on Google Apps to manage them from one control panel.

“Users belonging to different domains within an organization keep their domain-specific email address but can see coworkers from other domains in the organization’s global address book,” said Google Apps software engineer Will Smit. “It’s also easy for users to share across domains in Google Docs, Sites and the rest of Google Apps.”

In July, Google revealed its new user policy management letting admins segment their users into organizational units and control which apps are enabled or disabled for each group.

“These features have been well-received by the administrator community and we’ve seen healthy adoption among Google Apps for Business customers where these capabilities are helpful,” says Google Apps product manager Muzammil Esmail.

“Now all Google Apps administrators can use advanced control panel features to manage users and customize the security policies for their organizations, regardless of which version of Google Apps they’re using,” Esmail adds.

This week, Google also announced page-level permissions for Google Sites.

Google’s Wen-Ai Yu writes in a Google+ post, “For now, we’re focused on verifying public figures, celebrities, and people who have been added to a large number of Circles, but we’re working on expanding this to more folks.”

“Many celebrities and public figures are joining Google+, and if you’re like me, you want to be sure the person you’re adding to a circle is really who they claim to be,” she says.

No dispute there.

Some celebrities have had a little trouble keeping their G+ account up and running in the past (see William Shatner).

Getting people to add others to circles is obviously an important factor in continued Google+ user engagement. And nobody is going to get more followers than celebrities and public figures, so it makes sense that they would start the verification process here.

Celebrity use has been huge for Twitter’s growth (and probably hasn’t hurt Facebook’s either). Verified celebs and the recent addition of games should be tremendously helpful for Google to keep people coming back to their Google+ accounts.

The Google Doodles are a great deal more prolific than they used to be. What used to be an occasional thing is now frequent. To wit, today’s Alexander Calder doodle marks the second Google logo alteration this week. Granted, the Calder doodle is a little different than Gregor Mendel’s; Calder’s is interactive, but it just goes to show the frequency Google is introducing these things.

As indicated, the Calder logo is different from the Mendel doodle due to the fact it’s an interactive doodle that has to be hovered over before you can access the related search results. Normally, you simply have to click on whatever celebratory logo Google is using, and you are directed to search results related to the subject of the doodle. With the Calder logo — which simulates a mobile — the logo must be hovered over with the mouse, bringing up the following clickable link:

Once clicked, users are taken to the requisite Google results page. The reason the current doodle appears to be a mobile sculpture is because Calder is credited with inventing them. A snippet from Wikipedia reveals more:

Alexander Calder (July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.

With that, I’ve learned something today. Concerning the inspiration for the doodle, there’s a post by Jered Wierzbicki at the Google Blog which details the reason Calder was chosen:

Last year I wandered into a white room at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago full of Alexander Calder’s delicate “objects,” all beautifully balanced and proportioned, moving gently in the air currents like a whimsical metal forest. Calder took ordinary materials at hand—wire, scraps of sheet metal—and made them into brilliant forms, letting space and motion do the rest. As an engineer, I work with abstractions, too, so this really struck me.

But you kind of want to play with the things. They do not let you do that at museums.

So I coded up a very basic demo of a mobile and showed it to a friend, who showed it to one of our doodlers—and then this amazing thing happened: talented artists and engineers who liked the idea just started to help! What we ended up with is way cooler than anything I could have built on my own.

Wierzbicki goes on to say that the latest doodle was built using an “HTML 5 canvas,” and because of that, you’ll need a modern browser to use it (updated versions of Google Chrome, Firefox and/or the latest version of Internet Explorer).