Google Updated Algorithms - Effective Immediately

Hi Webmasters, Webdesigners,Bloggers and SEO Experts

Google has just looked after us once more. with the newly changed algorithms for search results, the user is supposed to gain from better search results and actulity based results. Now in one way the is a good thing, on the other hand; did Google ask anyone of us if we would like to participate in making the google World a better place?

Because it is us, the web developers who are the once paying the price for those better search results. Imagine that over the next month or so ALL off your customers come running to you because their sites have disapeard from the sunny spot you just where so proud to have them placed it on.

Imagine further that ALL of those customers now need new content on their websites on weekly, for not to say daily, bases to be able to stay in competition.

I can forsee hard times coming up if those changes to the Google Algorithms have been fully applied.

You can read all of my research, what i've spent most of the day with, on my Blog.

McHow2 - Major changes in Google Algorithms

The subject is open for discussion and i'm looking forward to what you all think about that.

Cheers
George

Sorry Samiotis but where do you see evidence of this happening ??

I know that fresh content is valued by Google as is valued by everyone but I have not seen anywhere been used as the only criterion ...

The origin of this information is the google webmaster community on the german site. I followed it up through several german websites. I found several small and bigger articles summarized the rsults and wrote my article. Evidence of what is going to happen i can't show you sorry. The New Year is only 4 days old and Google is a big machine so it will take a while. I have added an example in my article and you're welcome to try.
You can see the first signs by searching anything and seeing wikipedia drop down. At least in some countries. When i use the german google to search for koh tao, i have all the wikipedia links still on top. If i search on google us the have dropped to 3 and 4. And that wasn't like that a week ago. I'm certain of that because we just had a discussion about wikki stealing our best spots.
I guess more proof will come in time. Let's wait and see.

well about wikipedia I have seen wikipedia pages drop on a couple of searches that I have been involved all through last year but it happened long time ago as a response to webmasters complaining about the power wikipedia had that was taking over lots of searches ...

well I am not saying that you are not correct but I have to see some hard facts to actually believe it myself ...

Giorgos, i'm sure you are familiar with semantic search. And You must have heard that with the upraising of web2 it has become the future perspective for most if not to say all search engines to compile with the new system.

The (I think) first search engines that works already mainly on semantic search is Hakia. Still in beta version.
This doughter of ask.com is fun to use since you can ask whole questions and are deliverd (mostly) very accurat search results.

Where is the rest of you guys? No more opinions?
Everybody still on holiday i guess....  Enjoy :)

Not really familiar with all these, just heard the buzzwords but never paid attention.

what does semantic search have to do with fresh content ??

If I understand it correctly
semantic means based on meaning - and comes from Greek 

therefore
search results based on meaning/intent of the query -
and thus more relevant ...

but as far as I see it here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_search and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web

I don't see how one can judge a document as more semantic or relevant
on the freshness alone ...

Akribos. Greek - Symantica = Important - Symantikes Plirofories = Important Information - What could be more important for search results than news - new content?
I miss speaking Greek. :)

Now to find out what the fuzz is all about go here: http://www2003.org/cdrom/papers/refereed/p779/ess.html
This is a 5 year old paper but it's the best explanation of the goals of semantic search i found so far. Remember, 5 years old. We are now a bit further with the technology but the goal has stayed the same.

To provide the user with the most accurat and new data possible. Due to the structure of the semantic web itself, where search results are not only based on html content but on many other different sources, enterd from many different people under different circumstances and and and...

Now if you're looking up 'Papakonstantinoy' whilst you sit in Chios you'll find all kinds of People i'm sure, but do you get vassilis' new concert schedule for 2008 presented at the top results in January?  Nowaday a webmaster had to put up the schedule last year in January to give the page so much weight, to show up in your search results. Same for any kind of people or group related events.

The actual goal of the semantic web can only be achieved if search results turn out valuable and time orientaded content. But there is much more to it, so you can better read first hand infos in that paper that explains it much better than i could.

ctrl+ mouse-scroll makes the letters bigger - sometimes i think these guys need to save paper..... ;)

I see Giorgo,

it makes sense but I was pointing out that FRESHNESS ALONE does not mean Valuable OR relevant content ...

I imagine the case where a blogger puts 2-3 new posts of "garbage" everyday just to attract the search engines ...

Semantic has nothing to do with freshness. Google's main goal is to display relevant information on a query and I guess every major change in their algorithm is trying to achieve that.

The wikipedia thing is probably because they finally listened to all the seo experts that complained in the past for that. Freshness always was important in google but that doesn't mean that a static site wont get google traffic as link popularity (I mean correct link building) is much more important.

With the algorithms changing and the like, I wonder what the affect of the newest feature of logged in google users with search history can do: altering their search results.  I would think that after some time, the specific amount of times that these supposedly "individual" changes to your own search results will start influencing the results shown to the rest of the world,... or no?

That is exactly my feeling Aaron
and I have the feeling that results are already infuenced by the click through rates of the search queries

Wonder how long it will take until "click through" services are available on the net.... "... we click you to the top..." :) I' m thinking india or china, where labor is cheap.
Big companies pay good money to see their websites at the top, no matter how, no mercy.

...click...click....click... click...click....click... click...click....click... click...click....click...

That is quite right Giorgo,
click through services,

wanna start such a service ?  ;)

I'll join in the service with you two.... lol! Anyways, google has already remedied the wikipedia problem as well as the no-follow attributes thing... As far as I know, google is making changes to the algorithm, but not so much so as based on actual freshness of a page. However A drop of pages linked to you as google seems to focus on cutting results from site that obviously sells links... That what I noticed IMHO...

yes it effect start immediately