Google Update

[Brian Turner]

Google started an update in earnest yesterday that seems to be bringing major changes in areas of Google's results.

I've seen some rankings fall, others not affected - initial suspicion is that Google is weighting links differently, with established links with more semantic variation having more weight, while impermanent links with little variation being devalued.

Hard to tell, though, and speculation remains that - the dust isn;t clear yet, but it's going to be an interesting week.

[peterjhale]

I see britecorp has been hit

[Brian Turner]

Yes, which means I have a live example to work with.

Doesn't worry me too much - I don't depend on Britecorp rankings for sales leads, and I've not been able to take on much work this year as it is. Still, a little disturbing, but I'm sure I'll be ranking strong again very soon.

Luckily I only seem to have one client site badly affected, so I'm playing with a couple of different possibilities - one I mentioned in the original post, but the other is of data being lost and Google haveing to rebuild it's index - some reports of panic spidering would support that idea, but it's just too early to do anything other than speculation.

[peterjhale]

I have seen spidering on some of my little bitty sites that hardly ever see google today

[Brian Turner]

Ironic - Britecorp is no.8 on "Web" results of Google UK, but 100+ on UK only searches.

[revsorg]

Number 8 for what search phrase Brian?

[Brian Turner]

"Internet marketing" - it was one of those I thought to aim for with UK search.

[Brian Turner]

Just to add, this update has apparently been named "Jagger", and GoogleGuy (Matt Cutts) has warned that this is simply the first stage, and there are likely two more stages coming:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-weather-reporting/

a new binary is also wending it’s way from data centers like 66.102.7.x. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a second stage of the index rolls out around this time next week. I also wouldn’t be surprised if a third stage of the index rolls out the week after that. I just wanted to let people know that there’s still flux to come.

[Steve-H]

Originally Posted by Brian Turner

Ironic - Britecorp is no.8 on "Web" results of Google UK, but 100+ on UK only searches.

Hi Brian

Just a quick thought - where do you host Britecorp? If it is on servers outside the UK this can affect your UK filtered ranking. I know this from experience as one of our sites was moved from London to Florida by our host company. Our UK filtered results disappeared so we moved back to a UK host company (London servers) and got our results back within a few days.

[Brian Turner]

Britecorp has always been hosted in the UK - I have to say, I'm not too concerned, though. I expect that once this update clears, I'll be back doing well without changing anything. However, if not, I'll have to start crediting some of my other sites to Britecorp.

SEO always involves ups and downs - it's the nature of the game - but so long as the net movement is up, then that's all to the good.