According to the Official Google Blog…

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

So, how did your websites do? Did you feel a “Google Slap” or did it help you?

For most of my own websites I saw a positive result increasing my sites one full PR point and I see other good coming from this.

Most of what I do is focused on helping local business owners who lately for the most part are benefiting from the changes Google is doing with the tweaking of their systems. Google Places pages showing up on page one for keywords in local niches is just one place that Google is helping.

Please post a comment below on how you think Google is doing.

I just read a story on WebProNews, “If You’re Not Local, How Can You Compete in an Increasingly Local Google?” You might want to read the encouragement here for you if you own a local business in Elk River, Minnesota or any city in the nation.

Be sure to watch the video with Google’s Webmaster YouTube Channel, Matt Cutts. Matt is head of the Google webspam team. He lays it on the line and tells why Google Places is focused on pulling in local business listings to the SERPs.

If you are a local business owner with a store or office in the Greater Elk River, MN area I want to help you get on Page One of Google with your business. You can use my Contact Henry Griner form today to request a No Cost consultation to see what I can do to help your business grow in 2011.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read all about it on Google Mobile Blogspot.

I almost forgot about that dumb ad page until I noticed a Trending item on my Twitter page tonight… Google Buzz

Wow, is that a Hot Item and lots of people are upset with Google about this new “feature” that the Google boys (and girls) think is soooo coollll. Most folks thinks it stinks!

Checkout these blogs and postings to see what the Internet-universe thinks of Google today.

Molly Wood says, “I know some of the technorati are losing their minds over the awesomeness that is Google Buzz, but I think that Google’s making a lot of Facebook’s privacy and opt-in mistakes right out of the gate, and it’s going to bite it big-time, if it doesn’t fix it pronto.” READ MORE HERE

At the Official Google Blog, “”Today, we’re launching Google Buzz, a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting and share updates, photos, videos and more. Buzz is built right into Gmail, so there’s nothing to set up — you’re automatically following the people you email and chat with the most.” READ MORE HERE

Business Insider says, “There is a huge privacy flaw in Google’s new Twitter/Facebook competitor, Google Buzz. When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow.” READ MORE HERE

And over at Computer World, what’s that about a Naked Man?? “The second thing I saw was a list of public “buzzes” from people in my immediate area (including somebody who obligingly mentioned that he wasn’t wearing any clothes). Under each buzz was the person’s location — not the general location, but the full address. Street number, street name, city, state.” READ MORE HERE

Ok, so I think you get the idea, Google Buzz in the current form that has been pushed out on the world in the past 24-48 hours is a stinker.

If you want to turn it off, as I did, there is a button at the bottom or your Gmail page.

What do you think? Leave your comments below.

Google Analytics tracks visitors from all sources, including display ad campaigns, PPC (pay per click) campaigns, organic searches from search engines, email marketing, bookmarks, websites that have your inbound links, and other digital sources like URLs embedded in PDF files or Power Point slides. It designed for online marketers who want to track visitors to their sites for improving user experience and conversions.

Why do you want to use Google Analytics? There are several reasons for that.

You want to know if your marketing campaign is going in the right direction or not. For example, if you are doing article marketing to drive traffic to your site, you want to know the article directories that are the most effective in sending visitors to your website.

You don’t want to waste your time submitting articles to directories that are not sending you any traffic or a very low amount of traffic. You can write more articles and submit to only those directories that are sending you a good amount of traffic.

If you are using a pay per click (PPC) marketing campaign, you should use split testing to test the effectiveness of different ads. You want to know which ads are performing better than the others in terms of conversions. If you integrate Google Analytics with your AdWords PPC campaigns, you will be able to track the effectiveness of each ad you are using in your PPC campaigns.

Using data from Google Analytics, you will be able to find the pages that are getting the most traffic from search engines, bookmarks and inbound links. Knowing this information helps you spend time on optimizing only those pages that are getting the most traffic.

You can work on providing improved user experience of your site on those high traffic pages. Make it easy to navigate those pages from anywhere in your site. Place a “What is new” about your site on those pages.

If you’re selling ads on your site to advertisers directly, you need a visitors portfolio of your site. This portfolio contains information about the number of monthly unique visitors to your site, visitors’ geographic locations, the number of page views per visitor, the bounce rate of visitors, etc.

The more information about your visitors you can provide to your prospecting advertisers, the better is your chance of commanding a premium price for advertisement spots on your site. Google Analytics will help you develop a visitors portfolio of your site.

Even if you are not going to use visitors data immediately, you can still sign up for Google Analytics and let the tool start collecting visitors data about your site. When you need those data, you will have them in your Google Analytics account.