It doesn’t take an online marketing company with a decades' worth of experience to see that the relationship that SEO service providers have with Google is a complicated one. Of course much of this is owed to the recent string of Penguin and Panda algorithm updates (of which we discuss quite often), but there are also several other key aspects of the world's biggest search engine company that makes our jobs equally challenging and exciting. Take for example the constant addition and removal of network features for Google's numerous services.

Feature Report and Secrecy

Just this week, in fact, Google announced several changes will be made in the near future to a host of network functions. While these features include only a few select aps that generally aren't being used all that often (don't expect to see Maps go away, for example), this is still part of an ongoing trend with the company. It's also a habit of Google's that Microsoft even openly mocked earlier this year.

Aside from the constant adding and dropping of support for its applications, Google also tends to be incredibly secretive with everything it does. This is especially true with anything regarding the inner workings of its search engine. Although we shouldn’t expect the company to unveil how its algorithms work lest a new age of black hat SEO emerge, it still makes understanding what Google's search engine deems worthy of high page rankings quite the task. Matt Cutts, Google's head of its webspam division, does offer vague advice from time to time on his blog and on the Google Youtube account, but what constitutes a perfectly optimized page is still mostly conjecture at the present.

The SEO Back-and-Forth

Between Penguin and Panda, the apps, and the vague demands made of SEO companies, there are many ways that Google consistently impacts what we as online marketers and SEO consultants day-in and day-out. These days, the top SEO companies around are those that continue to hang on the company's every word and attempt to predict its actions. While no one can know for sure what Google intends for the future, most of us do realize one important thing: staying ahead of the competition means constant innovation and revision.