In today’s episode of Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm Jim Hedger and I discusses a couple recent events at Google. Namely the release of their Q1 earnings (SURPRISE – they’re up over last quarter) and Yahoo! using Google’s paid ads instead of their own. Rather than re-hash “old news” (OK – it was earlier today but you can listen to it all by downloading the podcast here) I’m going to cover a new issues – Google’s latest update.
Recently there’s been much news about a massive shift on Google named the “Dewey Update“. The update itself caused much chaos as SEO’s around the world reported huge swings in rankings. The forums have been abuzz and the update, unlike most, took place over weeks with some sites changing positions wildly 3 and even 4 times in a day. The update appeared to have settled late last week with only minor tremors affecting the rankings in what one might conclude to be a new way of adjusting rankings on Google’s end – a more fluid approach to rankings.
Tonight however there’s been another significant shift however there’s a pretty major difference – this one is much more in tune with the updates prior to Dewey which took place on an almost weekly basis,usually starting on Thursday or Friday evening.
A major difference between what we’re seeing now and what we saw with Dewey in that the effects and changes appear far more logical whew one can look at the results across numerous sites. The changes seem to take into account adjustments made to the sites and increases in backlinks rather than massive adjustments to the ranking system affecting what can only be described as almost random factors (I’m sure they weren’t actually random however it was impossible to get a lock on what was being tested with the changes occurring too often for any proper analysis).
Obviously as an SEO I’m very happy to see this return to stability and as a searcher I appreciate that what I see today is likely going to be similar to what I will see tomorrow. Helps instill in me faith that the results I’m being presented with are actually relevant. Or maybe I prefer it as it reduces the frantic calls from clients asking why they dropped positions from where they were 2 hours earlier and my only reply being, “well – check it again in a couple hours”. 😉