Continuing with analysis of Google’s search quality updates back in February with:

9. Minor tuning of autocomplete policy algorithms. [project codename “Suggest”] We have a narrow set of policies for autocomplete for offensive and inappropriate terms. This improvement continues to refine the algorithms we use to implement these policies.

Google’s search “autocomplete” is an import tool in driving searchers to more “popular” searches. Among other things, this makes the popular Adwords (pay per click) terms more competitive and more expensive for advertisers. This, of course, earns Google more money.

Google “Instant” is a heavy handed and widely hated feature with the same goal as Google Search “autocomplete.” The difference is that you can turn Google Instant off.

This particular change is aimed at removing offensive terms from autocomplete, which as been an embarrassing problem since its inception. You would think Google would take this problem as a clue that trying to drive searchers to popular searches is a BAD idea. But maybe Google is just a bad company.

With so many nice looking website templates available, why can’t you purchase a template, pay someone to install it, and paste in your text content, rather than designing a website from scratch?  A template design may be appropriate in a very narrow range of circumstances. Before  you decide to go with a template, ask yourself these questions:

• Does the template navigation have the same number of links as you have pages of content you want to provide your visitors? If not, are you willing to add filler content or leave out content to match those number of pages? If the answer is no to any of those questions, you’ll need to redesign the template.
• Do you really want to display a large piece of stock photography as the main focus of your homepage?
• Do you want to write or edit content down just to fit the boxes provided by the template?

From the perspective of a user-centered design process aimed at producing a user-friendly website, the idea of using a template puts the last part of the process first. The purpose of a visual design is to present the content in an intuitive and pleasing way. The content should be the focus of the website, not the look and feel. If you start with the visual design, the rest of the process becomes like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.  You will likely break both your content and the visual design of the template in an attempt to force them to fit together.

Continuing with analysis of Google’s recent (February 2012) search quality updates, now referred to as Google Panda 3.3:

8. Expand the size of our images index in Universal Search. [launch codename “terra”, project codename “Images Universal”] We launched a change to expand the corpus of results for which we show images in Universal Search. This is especially helpful to give more relevant images on a larger set of searches.

You may have noticed, that images are showing up on a wider variety of SERPs. I have some blogs that get most of their traffic from image search, so selecting quality images and properly tagging them is of the uttmost importance. Here’s what I recommend:

1. Include keywords in the filename
2. Include keywords in the img “Alt” tag (important for the visually impaired visitors as well)
3. Include keywords in the img “Titile” tag
4. Use microdata and create a Rich Snippet 

We are all aware of the sayings “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” “Different strokes for different folks” and “There is no accounting for taste.” Unfortunately, although these sayings are universal, the associated insights don’t seem to be. This is nowhere more apparent when designing something for someone else. What looks “professional” to one person, can easily be boring, ugly, or even unprofessional to a different person.

As a web designer you learn that almost all descriptive terms are useless in completing the nuts-and-bolts task of creating a design the pleases the client. You need them to show you what they like, and you need to show them how you interpret that, and there the actual dialog begins.

Over and above pleasing the client, the designer’s task is to make the client realize that their taste is not universal, and their target audience may not respond positively to what they think looks good, or cool, or whatever. More important than pleasing themselves  (or their partners, employees, spouse,  friends or mother) is creating a design that communicates the desired message to the target audience.

What can be even more of a challenge is the tendency for inexperienced website buyers to be fixated on look-and-feel, or the visual design, to the neglect and expense of useability. The desire to speed through, or skip the boring task of information design and content creation to get to the visual mockups is extremely common and uniformly disastrous. Then, when the website flops, of course it is the visual design that is the problem and needs to be fixed.

As a web designer, the best thing you can do to save the client from themselves in such cases is to try to explain with examples, and if that doesn’t work, stick to your process regardless of the pressure to do otherwise.

I designed this website for a criminal defense attorney.

This custom WordPress Theme was designed for a Wedding Photographer’s portfolio blog.

This website was design primarily as a sales tool that features shipping software video tutorials. The website is available in English and Spanish versions.

The Flash video features a custom player with full screen capability, as well as custom overlays that display calls to action when the video is paused, and when it completes.

This project was a website redesign for a non-profit organization that works children, parents and teachers to promote a character-building methodology. The key function of the website is to provide educational document downloads. The site also includes an events calendar, an online shop and photo galleries of the organizations numerous events.

This website was created for a non-profit organization dedicated to feeding the hungry. Key components of the website are a custom interactive map feature, the ability to publish news articles to multiple categories and the ability to accept donations.

Google announced on Tuesday that it would be removing keyword query data from Google referrals for searches performed by users logged into their Google account. The reason given by Google was to protect user privacy. “ Protecting user privacy is important to us” states Amy Chang or the Google Analytics team, on the Google Analytics blog post announcing the change.

However, Google is NOT protecting the privacy of those logged in searchers who click on a Google Adwords paid ad. Their keyword data will still be transmitted to paid advertisers’ Google Analytics accounts. Aaron Wall wrote a great post on the hypocrisy of Google’s ham-handed PR.

The bottom line is that businesses will no longer be able to see all keywords that are bringing visitors to their website. The amount of data effected, I assume, will depend on what percentage of Google searches are done by logged in users, and I didn’t have a good feel for that number initially (according to Matt Cuts it will be in the single digits).

I took a look at the stats for this website (http://www.pleasantonwebdesignblog.com/) and saw a new search term named “(not provided).”

So for the three full days for which I have keyword data that is marked  (not provided), slightly less than 4% of my total keyword data was  effected.  Not a big deal to me. So while there is potential for Google Analytics to lose it’s value over this issue, I’m not seeing it right now.