Google recently announced that it was planning a major algorithmic change targeted at cleaning up their search results. And as of last thursday’s blog entry, they seem to have succeeded.
Google’s own internal research suggests that the most recent change to the algorithm affected almost 12% of queries they receive. That’s pretty substantial, given that google might receive in the neighborhood of 91 Million visits each day (based on numbers from comScore and Search Engine Watch in March 2006). That’s means about 10.7 million hits to google are affected by this change. If we assume each of those represents one person, that’s a huge number of people who are suddenly seeing “improved” results.
Wowzers.
What does that mean for you, me, and the other bloggers in the world? As always, it depends on whether google thinks you’re a good guy or a bad guy.
The Wall Street Journal posted an article recently that gave a little insight into what kinds of sites google seems to be spanking. It appears that pages with lots of ads are the ones getting the real beatdown. Sites like EzineArticles.com, TheFind.com, and WiseGeek.com all saw their rankings drop.
On the flip side, over the past couple weeks, we’ve seen slight bumps in a couple of the clients we blog for. One of our clients who had been ranking #2 behind EZineArticles.com has suddenly claimed the number one position. Another client who we’ve written lots of content for, has been taking upward steps of 1 or 2 positions every day this week.
Needless to say, that’s a relief for me. Our SEO department has always been focused on building useful, non-spammy content. We try to stick to white hat stuff exclusively. But when Google puts on it’s butt kickin’ shoes, it tends to take some pretty large swipes. And you can’t really be sure if your rump is going to be on the kicking block.