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For Web sites that depend on their ranking in search results, Google’s secret — and frequently fluctuating — search algorithm can evoke a complex blend of admiration and fear.

Google is smart. We all know that. Here's a great bit of search engine cleverness of Kafka-esque proportions. How can you be seen by the entertainment industry as fighting piracy of copyrighted material and yet not have a negative impact on one of the largest infringers, YouTube—who you happen to own?

Google's Internet search engine is getting more personal by highlighting information drawn from its users' Gmail accounts on its main results page.

For Google, it's personal. The Internet search giant is no longer going to roll out the same search results to everyone... It's doing this in three ways. First, it's expanding search beyond public Web pages to the photos and posts you and others have shared privately. Second, as you type a person's name into Google, it will automatically suggest people you are close to or may be interested in. Third, Google is guiding users to profiles and Google+ pages related to the topic of interest.

Google's executive chairman denies that the company fixes its search results to promote its own websites and services.

Monahan contends the stock has over-reacted to the impact of recent changes in Google’s search algorithm that were designed to reduce the prominence of lower quality content sites in search results. The analyst contends the move likely will have a single-digit impact to the company’s earnings, but has resulted in a 40% drop in the stock price since mid-April, leaving the stock 20% below its IPO price. He contends the recent price of the shares “reflects future negative changes that are unlikely to materialize.”

Google is apparently testing cleaner-looking results pages. Overall, the new design looks less cluttered. Rows of text are spaced farther apart and text colors are more muted than previous versions.Compared to the darker, tighter text of the old results pages, the change is pretty stark and will take some getting used to, if Google decides to roll out these changes to all users.

Overstock.com said it has been released from Google's "penalty box," which pushed it down in search results as a punishment for the retailer's efforts to game the search system.

Google said its latest algorithm change is so big that users will notice different, higher-quality search results.