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After Google latest update nicknamed "Florida", many
webmasters discovered that their traffic plummeted.
What happened?
More importantly what can you do about it?
And what will Google do next?
What happened was that Google made an algorithm change on
how they rate web pages.
Every time you make a search, Google tries to show the most
relevant web pages that match your search term. By being
able to give the most relevant results for queries, they
have become the most used search engine in the world.
In order to keep out competitors they have to constantly
adjust and improve how they judge web pages.
Because this judgment is done automatically using software,
many webmaster have been modifying their sites in order to
improve their position in the search results. To do this
they have exploited different shortcuts and loopholes made
possible by shortcomings in the software algorithm.
Periodically Google make changes in order to stop some
webmasters to get unfair advantages by plugging one or two
of the loopholes.
This is what happened during the Florida update.
With this update Google introduced new algorithms which
intended to stop overuse of some search engine optimization
techniques.
More specifically they seem to have targeted search terms
found in text links also called anchor text.
Web pages with good positions in the search result, which
had had a disproportional number of in-bound links to them
from other web pages with the exact same search term in the
anchor text that the page was optimized for suddenly,
disappeared from the listings.
The pages did not disappear altogether. Just for the search
term that the page were optimized for.
For Google, the high proportions of anchor texts with the
same text indicate that the texts were put there for one
purpose only, to boost ranking.
One suggestion for you is to spread out the anchor text
with a mix of different texts to keep your page in the
search results. We don't know if your pages will come back
after some time if you do this, but it is likely.
Apparently the search result generated after the latest
update have been of a lower quality than before.
What seems to have happen is that a large percentage of web
sites have traded links with one another. This link trade
has been done with the same search term in the anchor text
that they have optimized their pages for.
The victims more often than not have been commercial web
sites that relied to heavily on search engine optimization
technique.
The search results have been taken over by web sites
composed of low quality directory and link farms.
Now, what will Google do next?
I don't know, but TRY TO THINK like Google!
This is what I would do if I was responsible at Google for
this.
First I think that they will modify and adjust the new
algorithm they have introduced during the latest update.
Changing the threshold or don't let the "over optimized
pages" drop out of the search result so easy, but rather
penalize them and put them under the threshold point.
I think, Google have a problem! You see, many "over
optimized" sites are of higher quality that those that are
not. To simply drop them out and say that there are enough
pages for the same search term is not always true.
There is a thin line between optimization and spamming and
where this boundary should be.
After this, what will Google do next?
It is clear to me that the many low quality directory sites
found in Google search results is a nuance to Google and to
the average web user.
It is in this area that, I think, they will make the next
modifications.
Google rate web pages according to relevance.
The level of relevance is judge based on the web page
content and/or how popular the web page is in the view of
Google.
To get a page popular you need to have links from other
pages. This can come from pages on your own site or from
other sites.
Ideally these links should be many, come from pages dealing
with similar or identical subject or come from pages that
themselves are popular.
The best is to have many links from pages dealing with the
same subject that themselves are popular.
This had led to an intense link exchange active among
webmasters. And the primary reason has been to achieve
better ratings. The primary purpose has not been to
increase the visitors experience value.
This goes against Google's principles.
To quote Google webmaster guidelines:
-Make pages for users, not for search engines.
-Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
-Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase
your site's ranking or Page Rank.
To counter this I think Google will target several
popularity increasing schemes like:
- Low value directory sites which have been created
automatically by robots. These sites contain extracts taken
from search engines and directories.
Google can easily spot these sites.
- The building of link directories attached to web sites.
They are built with link partner extracting software and
services. With them you can upload directory structures
directly into your site. This way you can build up a
massive number of link partners and also identify link
partners with high Page Rank values.
Of course, one can say that by doing this you can add to
your visitors experience as the directories make it easy
for them to find similar web sites.
However this is an argument that Google most likely would
disagree with.
Web sites using tactics like this are easy identifiable by
Google. The directory pages are composed of outgoing links
which either have the Title, Meta descriptor or other
content directly taken from the web pages they are linked
to.
Google just have to look at the texts from the directories
and the text on the web pages for matching.
Using product or services for this purpose is risking you
get banned or at least being penalized by Google.
Will this happen?
I think so!
When?
I don't know! Anytime soon, next month,..next year!
Nobody knows, only Google can tell!
I think Google also will look into reciprocal linking as a
whole.
Maybe they will start to identify pages with outgoing links
on them that link to other web sites and identify which
links are coming back from those domains.
What they like to see is spontaneous linking to your site
from web owners that regard you as a valuable resource to
link to, without you linking back.
I believe that they will limit the impact of reciprocal
linking, somewhat!
What can you do to improve your web traffic from Google
without violating its guidelines?
Build web sites that give value to your visitors.
Make it into a popular site, so that others want to link to
your site.
Build niche information rich sites. Either as mini sites or
as larger information sites.
Larger sites within a niche are given higher popularity
rating than smaller sites by Google.
If you do this your web site will not be affected next time
Google make a change. Unless of course your competitor
drops out of Google, then your traffic will get a boost.
----------------------------------------------------
Per Strandberg is a web marketer and software developer!
Currently he operates a web site for backup products and
data security information!
At http://www.data-backup-and-storage.com
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