Watch out Mark Zuckerberg and gang, Google is “secretly” working on “Google Me“, their own version of your little work called Facebook. As reported, Google Me will take social networking giant Facebook head on for the battle to conquer the social media world. For those who’s thinking, hey what happened with Google Buzz? Well, Buzz is actually and supposed to be a Twitter killer because of  its added features like sharing multimedia but it hasn’t really kicked off yet due to the earlier privacy issues.

We expect that Google will learn from its previous mistakes and the shortcomings of Facebook in regards to Privacy. Google Me will be based on the current Facebook model and possibly add more features that no one really thought of yet. Google employs some of the best technology brain in the world, I am sure they will come up with something hot and something that will click, I heard this is on high priority. I am expecting a beta version of Google Me will come out later this year, lets wait and see!

After a month of performing SEO for keywords “seo professional” and “seo consultant” I have now reached a new milestone in Google Australia. At present, I am ranked #2 for keywords “seo professional” in Google Australia, one more and I can claim the top spot. Now that is my ultimate goal for the next couple of months. Another keywords I have just climbed up on is  “seo consultant” . From out of nowhere in early May 2010, I am now at #10 in Page 1 of Google Australia.

How did I do it? Let me share something with you without revealing all.. I have used the power of “link popularity”. What is Link popularity?  It’s one of the major factor in the latest Google algorithm, it’s a way of spreading the word about your website to other websites using your main keywords, in my case “seo consultant” and “seo professional”.  When you increase your link popularity, you will climb up the rank ladder quickly, but you have to do it right, you have to do as per Google standards and policy. Dont SPAM, be relevant and be natural. Most of all be patient. This is also not applicable to all keywords, you must do an extensive research before using this method, because you might be battling against the big guns, sites with high link authorities.  Link Authority >>>> Link Popularity, remember that. If you are going up against these folks, it will take longer and it will take more than Link Popularity to outranked them. If you really need some professional advice and assistance, do not hesitate to contact me.

I have also launched a new Check Google Rank SEO Tool called MySiteSERP, you can find that here: www.mysiteserp.com enjoy!

Now that Google Caffeine has finally rolled out (new algorithm & new interface) webmasters and seo professionals around the world have mixed feelings about the new Google. Some doesn’t like it because they have lost a lot of traffic, some are rejoicing because they have gained more traffic and some just doesn’t care at all, they are just trying to get used to the new interface ( I have blogged about it here)

But overall it is not really that bad. Why? Because webmasters, online business owners with legitimate websites, that have performed ethical SEO have been rewarded for their hard works and efforts. That’s where the saying “make a website for users not for search engine” applies. Based on my observation, Google have taken out a lot of value to backlinks that were acheived unethically (hello cheap/free blog comments). They have also penalized websites that were made for ranking manipulation, specially those with duplicate contents or worse, those who belong to the duplicate content autoblog networks.

So, if your experience with the latest Google Caffeine update is not a very pleasant one, dont blame Google… Re-think your strategy, maybe the fault is in you. Another reason might be that your competitions have done a tremendous ethical link building campaign and you’ve got left behind. Always remember to do the right thing and patience is a virtue. You cant get stable ranking overnight, it takes a lot of time, effort, proper planning and execution. Google Caffeine is now watching.. Good luck!

Note: Some of the clients that I have who have benefited from the Google Update are from the finance sector like penny stocks and another one is from the marketing section like mailing lists

Google has updated all its Datacenters yesterday rolling out Caffeine datasets results, until now these results are still strong and showing up! Is this a sign that Google has finally done it? Perhaps…

Normally, Google rolls out Caffeine datasets to 1 or 2 datacenters and it stays there for about 5 hours or so for testing purposes, this usually stirs excitement in the Webmaster community but that excitement turned into disappointment when Google pulled out those caffeine datasets results… I’ve learned from this lesson, I used to be one of the webmasters who celebrate but after seeing this over and over again in the past 3 months, I knew it was just a test and Google was just teasing us.

But yesterday, it was a completely different story, I could probably say this might be it, what almost every webmasters are waiting for. Google has rolled out caffeine datasets to all its datacenters and it hasn’t change in the last 24 hours, it is still changing slightly but in a caffeine way, they are slowly inserting caffeine results. As I have posted in one of the Webmaster forums, Google is rolling out caffeine slowly, I quoted:

Yep they are everywhere guys, but it is being rollout slowly.. For example

6 hours ago:
keyword #1: 7th place
keyword #2: 8th place
keyword #3: 96th place

3 hours ago:
keyword #1: 2nd place
keyword #2: 8th place
keyword #3: 96th place

1 hour ago:
keyword #1: 2nd place
keyword #2: 2nd place
keyword #3: 15th place

these are real result changes.. it doesnt happen all at once, its rolling out slowly from my observation

Whatever this is, it is looking pretty good, especially to those who have performed legit whitehat SEO to their own site and to their client’s websites. I will give it till the end of the week till I come up with my own official thoughts about this update, but so far so good, everything is pointing towards caffeine. I will keep you all posted.

Since Google is working towards a major search algorithm overhaul codename “caffeine” they are also working in improving the physical looks of their homepage. Late last year they have mentioned that they will slowly roll this new look out to some members in the beginning of 2010 and I think I am feeling it now. I can see the new homepage looks using Firefox just tonight, but it won’t show up when I use Internet Explorer or Google Chrome which is strange.

Click on the image above for a larger view and you will easily noticed the difference.

• New texture of the Google logo
• The main structure of the homepage
• The side menus with icons
• and more..