Google's US Patent: What does it have in stock for you?

Google's US Patent: What does it have in stock for you?

What is this Google's Patent?

The filling of the US Patent (#20050071741- Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data) by Google has caught many SEOs off guard in their strategies forthwith with regard to ranking of sites in SERPs. The contents of the patent reveal that search giant has incorporated sweeping changes in the way it works, and has waged a war against search engine spam and artificial link inflation.

Google has become awfully aware that some of their results have begun to be well manipulated by people with deep pockets, simply going out and buying thousands and thousands of links. Sad enough, it has resulted into a damn situation wherein one often comes with links on the first page of the results that have nothing to do with what he or she wishes to look for.

Now, in the post-patent scenario, often used, misused and overused search engine strategies that paid off in the past, simply seem to be worn-out tools. This patent, which in all its intent strives to make information retrieval on Google on the basis of historical data, will definitely reorient it to dish out results to highly relevant and content heavy sites for a given search term.

So, what are the paradigm shifts by virtue of this patent?

- Google is all geared up to start looking at history very minutely. This, amongst other things, includes the history of your website, the history of individual pages on your website, and the history of links to your website and even pages within it.

- Google is well underway to take into consideration the traffic patterns of your site's visitors. It will sharply focus on things such as length of stay on the page that someone gets through the link as well as how many links, both internal to your site and external to it, get used by a visitor.

- Google has considered it imperative to look at user behavior on your site, and the history or the trend of that behavior. This entails not only what kinds of links are browsed, where they go, and what the link text says, but more specifically user browsing behavior and surfing patterns.

- It is going to look out for new content on existing pages as well as new pages being created. It implies that a content driven site, that people use, like, and come back to, is likely to climb up the rankings.

- Moreover, not only is Google going to begin looking at your site's history and the history of visitors to and from your site, it is also going to be grouping all of their various history trends into a single lump and provide crucial scoring.

Strategies that need a serious rethinking

- People tactically use "content randomizers" in an effort to make Google think their sites are being changed frequently. This strategy seems to be redundant as Google will be maintaining your site's history which is the crux of the new patent.

- Sites will not only need to have links as was customary in recent past, but those links will have to be utilized to be counted.

- Content "freshness" is going to matter crucially as against the past trend. Google is all set to look for "freshness" in not just your own pages, but links to your site as well.

- You can no longer lose sight on your focus in providing your web surfers what they want even though your hitherto engagement in the same yielded some results.

- Google going to scrutinize under its close observation the links to your site, the number of them, where they go. Let alone this, Google will also be tracking click through ratios of those links.

- Your site's "stickiness" is going to be important to your rankings within Google regardless of what you used to resort to get rankings so far.

So, what are the strategic choices before SEOs in the aftermath of this patent?

- Now it is in the fitness of the things that folks that sell "links" on their website should have a second thought why and how they are doing this. The patent specifications precisely call for the links to be actually used by people. So, this explicitly implies that you'll need those links to be well within content.

- With a good mix of content and links off to external sites and pages, you are likely to get most "bump," especially when the links are well surrounded by other content.

- Your Search engine strategy should take care of the fact that new content is added regularly to your site and people are actually staying to read the content.

- It is desirable to keep your pages themed, relevant and most importantly consistent. You have to establish reliability. The days of spamming Google are nearing to an end.

- When it comes to linking, you must clearly avoid the hocus pocus or magic bullet linking schemes.

Let's read writings on the walls before it is too late

- If you participate in quick fix link exchange scams, use automated link exchange software or buy hundreds of links at once, there are pretty chances that Google will interpret your efforts as a spam attempt and act accordingly. So, tread with caution.

- Since Google is capable of tracking the click-through rates to your web site, you have got to make sure that your web pages have attractive titles and utilize calls to action so that web surfers click on them in the search results

- If you stand in need of multi page content changes implement the changes in segments over time. Continue to use your original keywords on each page you change to maintain theme consistency.

- You can simply make significant content changes by implementing lateral keywords to support and reinforce your vertical keyword(s) and phrases. This will also help eliminate keyword stuffing.

- Make sure to determine whether the keywords you're using require static or fresh search results and do update your web site content accordingly. On this point RSS feeds may play a more valuable and strategic role than ever before in keeping pages fresh and right away at the top of the SERPs.

- Webmasters must look forward, plan and mange their domains more tightly than ever before or risk plummeting in the SERPs - Relevant content swaps may be a pretty fine alternative to the standard link exchange and allow you some control of the link page elements

The heart of the matter

This patent is, in fair probability, going to force websites to become much more "customer" centric, and that's always a good thing. The criterion Google has set for search rankings, and the direction search innovation is going speak volumes on Google's exemplary efforts to provide the best search service in the world.

Deepak Sharma is a Web Designer at BlueApple, a Web Design and Development Company with a well connected development infrastructure in India having a strong portfolio with global clientele and offering superior web services and solutions at competitive costs

Trademark Law - The Protection of Famous Trademarks

Famous trademarks are awarded significant protection under the Canadian Trademarks Act. The trademarks act protects the owners of trademarks from others who would use a confusingly similar trademark. Section 6 of the act defines what constitutes confusion. In particular, section 6 states that the use of a trademark causes confusion with another trademark if the use is likely to lead to the inference that the wares or services associated with those trademarks are manufactured, sold, leased, hired or performed by the same person or business, whether or not the wares or services are of the same general class. Hence, trademarks which are quite famous, can theoretically be protected against others who would use similar trademarks for completely different products or services. This has lead some to speculate that famous trademarks can be enforced beyond the scope of their original trademark registrations. Hence, the trademark registrations for the famous trademark VIRGIN, used by the Virgin group of companies, could theoretically be enforced against any person or company who used the trademark VIRGIN for virtually any product or service.

The supreme court of Canada in the recent case of Mattel Inc. V. 3894207 Canada Inc. has clarified the law concerning the issue of confusion as applied to famous trademarks. The case involved a numbered company which operated a chain of restaurants in the Montreal area under the trademark BARBIE'S. The numbered company filed a trademark application in order to protect its trademark. The application was approved by the trademarks office, but later opposed by Mattel Inc. on the basis that the mark was allegedly confusing with Mattel's registered trademark BARBIE. The opponent, Mattel, brought forward survey evidence which demonstrated that, in the mind of the people surveyed, that there might possibly be a link between the applicant's restaurant and the opponents trademark. Despite Mattel's evidence, the opposition board rejected Mattel's position. Mattel appealed to the Federal Court. The Opposition board's decision was confirmed by the Federal Court and then again by the Federal Court of Appeal. Mattel appealed yet again to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Supreme court dealt with two principal issues, namely the nature of confusion and the nature of the evidence used to find confusion. On the issue of confusion, the court accepted Mattel's contention that the BARBIE trademark was famous. Indeed, the justices agreed with Mattel's contention that the BARBIE trademark had reached the status of a cultural icon. Nevertheless, in the court's opinion, the mark was famous only with respect to dolls and not with respect to restaurant services. While the court concluded that resemblance of the wares/services is not a requirement for a finding of confusion, a significant difference in the nature of wares/services used in association with two trademarks was an important consideration in determining confusion. Simply because the BARBIE trademark was famous with respect to dolls, that fame, in itself, did not render the mark famous in other areas such as restaurant services. In effect, the court held that since the "doll" business and the restaurant business appealed to different tastes and largely different clienteles, there was no likelihood of confusion between the two trademarks. As to the issue of the survey evidence introduced by Mattel, the court dismissed it as irrelevant. The court noted that the test is one of likelihood of confusion, i.e. that there must be a finding that the two marks are likely to be confused. The court noted that the survey asked the question "Do you believe that the company that makes BARBIE dolls might have anything to do with this sign or logo". The survey asked a question addressing the issue of possible confusion, not likely confusion. The court seemed to leave open the door for the possible relevance of this type of survey evidence, provided of course the wording of the question resulted in a clear test of likelihood of confusion. Of course, evidence of actual confusion would have been highly relevant; however, no such evidence was submitted.

While this case does seem to limit the scope of protection afforded to famous trademarks, the case did leave the door open to marks whose fame was such that confusion could be found even if the competing mark was used for very different wares/services. Indeed, the court sited the example of the VIRGIN trademark, which has been used with a diverse nature of wares and services including soft drinks, music, games, resorts, cellular phones, clothing, books, cosmetics, credit cards and even air lines. The fame of the VIRGIN trademark may be of such breadth that using a similar mark for an unrelated service or product may result in a likelihood of confusion. In essence, since the VIRGIN trademark is famous in such a variety of different areas, it is possible that the average consumer might be confused if confronted with a similar trademark in a line of business not presently occupied by Richard Branson's group of companies.

Elias Borges is a lawyer and a registered patent & trademark agent with Borges & Rolle LLP in Toronto, Canada. patent lawyer