I’ve noticed an interesting change in the way that Google gives results when searching with quotes. In the past it was not necessary to close your quotes to get an exact match search. You could use an opening quote only and then type in your search query and the SERP page would appear exactly the same as if you had used both opening and ending quotes like the search pictured above. But now, an open quoted search looks like this:

It’s gone from 1 match to 400,000 matches. While the exact match for this particular search still ranks at the top of the SERPs, note that Google lists many other results as if the query was entered without quotes at all. What’s interesting is that on a particular search I just did (not pictured), the exact match DID NOT appear first in the SERPs.

What does this mean? Well I’m not sure how many people use the no ending quotes shortcut to search in Google (or if there’s even a way to find out) but it’s no longer a viable way to research anything. Any users who do search in that way, will no longer be getting the exact match results they are expecting. I don’t think it’s worthwhile to pursue any strategies to take advantage of it in any way other than to increase your rankings in general (since I’m assuming the percentage of users who are affected is small) but it’s something you should definitely be aware of for your own research if you had been using this shortcut.

Just in case you don’t know what nofollow is you can find more information here. To cut the story short its an attribute rel=”nofollow” that was introduced in attempt to tackle the spam. Links containing this attribute do not have any effect on page rank.

I was never really a big fan of nofollow since it was introduced. I mean… 3 years later and did it reduce any spam? Do you see a reduction in comment spam? Not really… Not only the whole concept failed in terms of spam reduction, we are now told to stick nofollow on any link that we don’t quite trust. In the worst case you will get done for selling links and Google will take your precious page rank away. Whats really ironic is that in most cases your SERPs will continue to improve even though you clearly received a slap from Google for being naughty and your ever so green bar would now show blank. Yet, it’s not like PR matter anyway but that’s a different topic.

A while back i was fiddling with Google webmaster tools when i noticed that Google would still display nofollow backlinks. (Webmaster tools display most backlinks Google is aware off unlike link: queerie) So Google is definitely aware of these backlinks. We know they will not effect PR (According to Google) but do they have any effect of SERPs? Just a few weeks ago i would have said yes, they do help you slightly, simply making an educated guess. However something popped up recently that i found quite interesting. There was a little spammer application developed designed to spam nothing but a certain script. Whats strange is that even though every single backlink you would get from that script is nofollow, spammers were still able to achieve high SERP rank thanks to thousands of nofollow links. I don’t know how long their position will last but you can clearly see the benefits in the short run. I guess nofollow backlinks are not that bad after all. So the next time you get an opportunity to get a quality nofollow backlink… don’t just walk past it thinking that link is useless.

PS: Here is a good firefox addon that saves me a bit of time and can highlight nofollow links on the page you are visiting. Clicky