Been Gazumped by Google? Trying to make Sense of the "Florida" Update!

Been Gazumped by Google? Trying to make Sense of the "Florida" Update!: "The following is an attempt to put down rationally (I hope) most of the information that is known and the (unproven) theories behind the update algo.

Starting on the 16th of November, a major shift in results was seen on Google...

In many areas all the top 20 ranking sites disappeared, including industry leaders, to be replaced by educational sites, news review sites, government sites, major shopping portals or directories. Something major had happened - but what?

After tests on over 500 phrases we have concluded that certain phrases kick in the new algo, and certain don't. The ones that do are always highly commercial and the ones that are not, are often also commercial.

Be aware these are theories, some are bizarre, some may be close to the truth - but only Google knows what they are doing.

Main theory; Google manages to identify sought-after search terms. It then, when the search term is looked for, applies an optimisation filter to redress the influence SEOd sites may have and reveals the adjusted, "authoritative" results. This is why you tend to see governmental, educational, shopping portal, business directory and news sites on many searches. However, some commercial sites will still be considered the authority on that subject and remain - many, though, will drop out. This is the theory we subscribe to. We believe this was, and is, the intention of Google in this update.

Google is trying to separate their results into non-commercial and commercial. Commercial results will be AdWords and non-commercial the natural listing, primarily used for research purposes. My conclusion - well, it was probably me who started this, with a rather cynical tongue-in-cheek remark on the High Rankings Forum. Well, in reality, this is pretty much impossible and would defeat Google's idea of returning the most suitable sites for all searches. But some searches do make it look that way. However, in my opinion, this is not true.


Google has changed their algo to suit their biggest advertisers. My conclusion - highly unlikely and I do not believe that Google has any wish to be seen as an unethical company, regardless of their growing unpopularity with "jilted" webmasters.


There is no separate algo for "commercial" phrases and this is a new over-all update. My conclusion - all evidence points to this not being the case. I'm waiting to be convinced I am wrong, though.


This is a result of a virus or blog results upsetting the standard results which can only be seen if you type in -mt-tb.cgi as revealed in The Register. My conclusion - this is confusing the results returned unfiltered as shown with our -waffle (or any other garbage word) with a method of getting rid of extraneous listings from Blogs in the search results by excluding from the search the signature of the most used blogger trackback script.

Conclusion:

Despite the furore, there is no great conspiracy theory. Google are trying to redress the balance by trying to eradicate obvious search engine manipulation from their most competitive results. Remember, it is what Google considers their most competitive results probably gauged by both value and number of searches. As such, certain types of site don't fall into this category. SEO sites, for example, may be competitive but are not searched for with huge frequency.

The results of the filter have probably surprised Google, but, for the moment, few surfers will notice anything - unlike webmasters. The quality of the results has changed, with searches for home alarm, web design Calgary, and medela breast pumps showing, variously, sites with nothing to do with home alarms, a hockey team being top for web design and a listing of pretty much nothing but shopping portals. (My thanks to some of the many people who have posted some of the searches they have seen and I have used - you know who you are!) Many feel this has been a severe downgrading in relevancy, others believe that this is an improvement in the surfer experience. It is your judgement!

It is certain that Google will be watching the result of their change and will adjust the algo if they think it will reward sites of merit and increase relevancy. Whatever happens, though, the days of easy rankings through simple SEO are over"