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The acceleration rate of Google announcements is amazing to watch.   As Search Engine Strategies’ Chicago conference roars into full swing this week, Google has:

* Offered an olive branch to mainstream media
* Introduced some nifty Android phone apps that has my wife broadly hinting about a new phone
* Finally introduced official extensions for Google Chrome
* Finally launched Google Chrome for Mac in development/pre-beta
* Launched all kinds of translation and other gadgets.
* Fundamentally changed the search engine results for everyone in North America using Google’s search engine.

Did you miss that last announcement?   We’ve been telling people for several years not to pay attention to rankings because they differ.  They’ve been slightly differing for a very long time.   Now comes the time when they will be different for everyone.

We could explain the ins and outs, but it’s easier to quote and show you the official Google video.  On their official blog, Google posted last week that,

Previously, we only offered Personalized Search for signed-in users, and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts. What we’re doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can provide it to signed-out users as well.

What does that mean?

Search guru Danny Sullivan calls this phase Search 4.0.   Danny says:

The short story is this. By watching what you click on in search results, Google can learn that you favor particular sites. For example, if you often search and click on links from Amazon that appear in Google’s results, over time, Google learns that you really like Amazon. In reaction, it gives Amazon a ranking boost. That means you start seeing more Amazon listings, perhaps for searches where Amazon wasn’t showing up before.

Sullivan continues:

If they’re looking for a plumber, Amazon probably isn’t close to being relevant, so the personalization boost doesn’t help. But in cases where Amazon might have been on the edge? Personalization may help tip into the first page of results. And personalization may tip a wide variety of sites into the top results, for a wide variety of queries.

We told readers a month ago to stop chasing rankings.   We even said in March that “search rankings are dead” as a metric.

Online marketing is about increasing profit.   Is generating profit easier if a page on your web site is at the top of someone’s search results?   Sure.  But ranking is also also about engagement, promotion through advertising and  dozens of other significant factors.    You still have to do the basics:  you need well-written copy on pages organized in a search-engine friendly way with the appropriate meta information, including page titles (title tags) that technically aren’t meta tags.  And you need links from other relevant, authoritative web sites and many other things.

Those are the table stakes.  That’s what lets you put your site into play as a viable commercial web site.   But stop saying you want to be #1 for widgets in your town.  Because your #1 is my #7 is your supplier’s #43.   We always tell our clients to follow the money.   A search engine ranking is not a proxy for profit.

Here’s what the Google camp says about their new search results:

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You know, you wouldn’t think it would cost that much to hire an editor or a proofreader — my 16 year old son. True, son, and if we’re spreading truths then the fact is your old man can use one almost every day.  I’m not quite the King of Typos, but I am the Emperor of Dropped or Wrong Words.  Then again, I write a blog for Silver Beacon Marketing’s clients and the people who pass by, not as the representative of a major market television affiliate.

There were big doings here in the DC area yesterday.  You see, it snowed three inches at Dulles Airport, just a few miles from my house.  Had this been a Monday rather than a Saturday, the federal government would have invoked its liberal leave policy, and hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren would have joined my son in sleeping late. But it was a Saturday, which meant those same people who watched the monster three inches bear down on Dulles also braved the storm to go to the B.J.’s Wholesale Club that’s certainly within sled dog distance to see Sarah Palin.

Our nation’s culture of celebrity meant that the district that overwhelmingly rejected Ms. Palin and Senator McCain’s candidacy showed up in the snow with copies of a book for her to sign. (The greedy opportunists probably have it on eBay now, and had I not been doing an SEO audit yesterday, I think I may have done the same.)

But my son Jared nailed the real issue behind today’s headlines and he even spotted why an editor was needed.  You see, editors are filters.  I deliberately wrote this blog with a heavily slanted voice, allowing more of my own voice to creep in to the writing than any professional journalist should allow. When I asked Jared why he thought the headline and lead on the WJLA-TV site was inconsistent, he said, “I’m guessing someone doesn’t like her very much.” Then he pointed a typo in the last sentence’s introductory clause.  He certainly has Mom’s proofreading skills. But if all of this nitpicking on the local ABC affiliate (story below) is a lighthearted Sunday rant,  the fact is that as newsroom budgets get cut and mainstream media resources are stretched, you’ll see more of “hundreds” in the headlines and “thousands” in the text as a writer talks about braving what was then a solid inch of snow. As my son says, the least you could expect from an ABC affiliate is that they had enough money to hire an editor.  You see, editors are filters, and we need more of them everywhere.

WJLA online article about Sarah Palin book signing
WJLA online article about Sarah Palin book signing
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A network connection’s DNS settings are kind of like your body’s DNA.   DNS is an acronym for Domain Name System.   This is the system that translates a string of numbers into the words you type in a browser to go to a web address.

One way of thinking about this is accessing Yahoo! via your phone.   You type m.yahoo.com.    That gets translated in the connections to 69.147.76.15, which is an address where Yahoo!’s servers for mobile versions of their sites reside.

Now Google is offering a service that harnesses the company’s extensive data center and connections in what company officials say will make your browsing experience faster.  I’ve tested this through several connections, and I have seen faster results using different operating systems and browsers.   Whether you trust Google’s privacy promises to not tie all of your browsing history to your account is another matter.   Remember that your workplace or your home Internet provider already has this information.

This is not a recommendation that you use Google’s DNS service, but if you choose to do so, Google’s DNS  instructions are in plain English on the company’s site.  And in a first for the company that famously doesn’t talk to end users, there is even telephone support.

Yessir, Google wants you sending their traffic through them, and the service is noticeably faster in some cases.  Your mileage may vary, and you have to choose the privacy options best for your particular situation.