Surviving a Google Update
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My blood pressure is up and my heart is a-fluttering!! Is it love? No, it’s just another Google update!! Many people are well aware of the business ramifications that occur when an update is underway and their site suddenly disappears from the Google rankings. However, others may be completely unaware of the update and it is business as usual for them. So what is an update and what should you do when it is taking place?
Feel free to discuss this on our blog ‘Insights into search for Business’.
What is a Google Update?
Google updates its index data, including backlinks and PageRank (PR) continually and continuously. However they only export new backlinks, PR, or directory data approximately every three months. When new backlinks, PR appear, they have already been factored into their rankings for some time. Some changes are hardly noticed at all. Some changes are more visible.
Google also crawls and updates its index every day, so different or more index data usually isn’t an update either. Google uses the term, “everflux” which describes the constant state of low-level changes as they crawl the web. Consequently, rankings change to a minor degree. That’s normal, and is not determined to be an update
Usually, what registers as an update with the search marketing community is when Google updates an algorithm (or its data), changes their scoring algorithms, or switches over to a new piece of infrastructure. .
Google Update Names
These days rather than having a large monolithic update, Google tends to have smaller (and more frequent) individual launches. The first memorable major Google update was named Florida. Though there were quite a few before Florida, including Boston, Cassandra, Dominic etc. Florida, which occurred in November 2003, had catastrophic effects for countless web sites and instilled horror into the hearts of webmasters and SEO consultants when optimized sites started to completely disappear from the Google rankings. After Florida came other updates including Austin, Allegra, and Bourbon. The current update has been dubbed Jagger.
The ‘Jagger’ Update
There is currently a Google update underway named ‘Jagger.’ If your business depends on online sales you may have noticed some changes in the results pages for your keyword phrases. Perhaps your site has fallen well down in the rankings. For many this is a bad time to have an update with the holiday season fast approaching and many businesses relying on sales from this time to keep them afloat.
Google is the most popular search engine on the internet and many businesses rely on their high ranking to drive traffic to their sites. Google gives high rankings to sites they determine relevant for individual search terms. The value of a site is established by an algorithm that includes various criteria to judge relevance. Every so often Google updates this algorithm to improve the relevancy of their results. During an update the relevance of the results are thrown into disarray. This is what is currently happening with the Jagger update.
According to Matt Cutts of Google the Jagger update is in place to reduce the amount of ‘spam’ sites that are included in the search engine results. These ‘spam’ sites have been built using techniques that are deemed inappropriate by Google such as using invisible text, inappropriate link architecture, and duplicate content. Sites incorporating these techniques use them to trick their way to the top of the search engine results.
What has many business owners frustrated is the fact many sites built following Google’s guidelines have dropped completely from the rankings. And within Google there is no guarantee these dropped sites will get back up in the rankings once things have settled down.
Currently the Jagger update has just entered its second phase with the third phase to follow in the first week of November. This means the upheaval should be over by mid November. The good news for searchers is more relevant sites will be listed for the search terms they use. The bad news for online business owners is they will have to sit and wait this out. Many are keeping their fingers crossed for some level of normalcy as the holiday shopping season really kicks into gear. Unfortunately there are no guarantees and other marketing channels may be the only solution.
What Now?
Phase 3 of the Google ‘Jagger’ update is still underway. We are waiting patiently for the dust to settle before we analyze what has happened. However, before you make any adjustments to your site, we strongly recommend that you bear in mind that it’s still too early to completely gauge the update's full effect.
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