More Google, more panic
To tell the truth, I'm getting a little tired of re-hashing the Google situation in every blog post, but it seems there's no way to escape. Every newsletter I get, every discussion forum I visit, Google is the big topic of conversation. What exactly did Google do on their new ranking algorithm, why did they do it, what will they do next, and how can I make it all work to my advantage?
Search engines re-index all the time, but usually don't merit this degree of obsession. Yahoo! Directory re-indexed some time ago, and a few sites I know of got bumped from great rankings to being cellar-dwellers. Yet, I hear nothing of this in the industry buzz.
So why Google, and why on this change to their ranking algorithm? Simple. Google has become the most widely-used search engine in the world. This means that major changes are noticeable to a much wider range of people. It also means that major changes can affect the e-commerce fortunes of many businesses, at a very critical shopping season. I understand all this, which is why I am diligently perusing all this industry news for any new item of information. To date, I haven't seen anything new or exciting since the first few days.
The latest panic started by a brief comment at the WebPro World Forums, by Marissa Mayer of Google. She commented that if your site has lost rankings, one thing you can do is look at your link partners. If they've used spamming, then odds are, your ranking has dropped because of it. Many people interpreted this to mean that you could be punished by having a link to your site from a spammer or a link farm, and panic set in because you can't control who links to your site. It would be a great way to destroy a competitor's ranking, wouldn't it? Put a link to their website on a bunch of junky link farms, and get their ranking wiped out?
The voice of reason countered that today, by pointing out that this is so visibly open to malicious exploit that Google would surely never do it. On the other hand, Google has been pretty open about the fact that they intend to destroy the VALUE of such links -- not the sites that are linked there, but how much those links are worth. So, if your ranking depended on link popularity from a number of questionable link sites, then your ranking will almost certainly go down, because that link popularity factor has been modified.
This makes sense to me. They are trying to give good ranking to quality sites that deserve it. Any form of spamming or exploiting is probably going to be punished. Hidden text, spammed keywords, and other blatant ways to try to manipulate rankings have already been pretty much nullified. Link farms were the next big exploit, so it makes perfect sense that they were next on the chopping block.
We do very little cross-linking as a rule, and restrict it to sites that are obviously relevant and don't have link farms set up. Our sites, on the whole, have not been adversely affected by the shake-up. All I can say is that it pays to play clean!
No one knows what will happen on the next Google dance. Take a deep breath, count to ten, and WAIT. We'll know a lot more about what to do next, when we see how Google has reacted to the current situation.
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