The new Google Beta Search Engine was launched this week, with much hype.

It’s been a good 2 years since Google launched a huge change in it’s engine, so it was about it. The change is usually August / September time – just in the nick of time for Christmas sales.

So what’s changed this time?

Matt Cutts said it was a more under the bonnet change – with a complete re-write of the infrastructure of the engine. Pretty big stuff.

It certainly seems faster and fresher, with more recent articles shown in the listings. So fresher, newer content is going to grow in importance in the listings.

What does it mean to actual listing listings?

There certainly seems less pages indexed in the beta version compared to the live search. Which means they are only indexing a smaller number of pages, as it’s in only test mode.

The geo-targeting algorithm certainly doesn’t seem to be delivering the same results as compared to the live engine. I have tried using different Google servers throughout the world and got different results compared to Sandbox Google.

I imagine that it’s Google US engine that’s being used in the sandbox, irrespective of any regional or country parameters you put in the Sandbox URL.

So what do you need to do?
Until the beta version is live, it wouldn’t be wise to do any changes. It is unclear what the changes are at this point in time, and loads of people are guessing.

If you have been running an ethical SEO campaign, then you have no worries about the changes. If you know you have been sailing close to the wind on the SEO, then it could be a different story.

Either way, until the new search is live, we won’t know. So hold tight and just ride out the storm.

Continue to add new content to the site and blog as normal…….and let’s wait and see what the new version of Google holds fo us all.