Word emanating from the US over the past few days is that Google have made a change to their organic ranking algorithm, which they claim will positively affect 12% of all searches (don’t they always?!). The official Google blog announcement states the change is designed to improve relevancy in their results and “reduce rankings for low-quality sites”. While the general online population should (and do) welcome this change, as always when Google makes major algorithmic tweaks, several sites/webmasters are claiming unjust punishments.

Informed commentary believes that the change is aimed at what we know as scraper sites and content farms (despite no official confirmation from Google). “Sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful” will likely see previously strong rankings drop significantly. Many of these sites hold what some see as artificially inflated rankings attributable to things like link schemes (JCPenney, anyone?), and usually don’t offer much of substance to a web surfer. Google’s ongoing mission is to provide people with useful information relevant to their query and eliminate spam from their results.

In one of the first blog posts on the topic from SearchEngineLand, the ever nimble Danny Sullivan coined the term ‘farmer update’. Some of the more interesting comments over there include:

TeacherPaul: “Many high quality sites got hurt deeply by this change. We’re not talking about content farmers or even extremely small gardens. Good people, great content, using honest methods…. a 40% drop in Google referrals on average”

Feedthehabit: “My original content at FeedTheHabit.com gets copied, re-copied and posted all over the Web the second I click publish. I saw a 25% drop in traffic from Wed to Thurs…”

Miker d: “After 10 years of creating content to help others, it looks like our traffic took a 30-40% dip from Google starting Feb 24th”

TheTopTens: “Despite the fact that the site provides a genuinely positive user experience based on user behavior and conversion rates, US traffic after the update is down approximately 50% with high traffic keywords being the hardest hit.”

Dan Coxon: “All of my articles are original, in-depth, and written by myself. But the traffic seems to have dropped dramatically overnight, sometimes by as much as 60%”

(The above comments need to be taken with a pinch of salt – despite the consistency with traffic dips, the bigger picture needs to be examined here such as the link profile etc. of the sites in question)

We move into a slightly grey area when we try to define a content farm. Is it fair to say that article sites could be considered content farms? While not all content these sites publish is necessarily high-quality, some of it can be very useful and topically relevant for searchers – how would distinction be drawn between high-quality original and low-quality republished content on the same site?  Can an algorithm categorically grade content high/low quality?

Going back to scraping & copying content, Google could look at the original date each webpage was found & indexed, but what happens if your content is scraped, published and indexed before the bots revisit or visit your site? Also, the ‘last modified’ header in itself cannot be used as the sole determinant, since the original page may just have been slightly updated, moving it’s ‘last modified’ date further in time than the scraped content. The official line from Matt Cutts is that “we look at various signals to determine which page is the original one, which usually works very well”, but in reality they cannot always get it right. One would imagine that identifying and flagging these issues becomes somewhat of a manual process in cases where it’s not clear cut. I would also suspect other factors like domain authority/link reputation/topic clustering come into play.

For now it looks as if we’ll have to sit tight and keep an eye on how this one plays out – just like every update. Fortunately for those of us in Australia, it has been mentioned the change currently only affects US traffic, so we’ll have a bit more time to absorb the effects stateside leaving us in a better position when the tweak goes global.

As always, more than keen to hear others thoughts/experiences!

2010 has been a busy year for search engines, and it is becoming more and more important for them to provide the most relevant results, as the search volumes has been regularly increasing year on year.

Each year, there have been an increasing number of searches, more searchers, and those searchers do more searches themselves, so one thing is for sure: ranking well for key search terms is more important than ever.

Let’s have a look at the top changes search engines brought in 2010, in order for them to provide more relevant results and drive searchers to their site:

#1 Google drinks too much coffee and brings out the “caffeine” update

What does that mean for results? Where Google used to index pages and sites in regular waves, this update allowed them to update their results incrementally, meaning quicker indexing. If you are working to get your site optimised,

you will see changes quicker, whether they are positive or negative.

This caused quite a stir in the SEO business as rankings changed, pages disappeared and came back, but it quickly stabilised. People following the big Google algorithm updates will know it usually does impact the results quite a bit but it is always an intense moment!

#2 What you say online becomes a ranking factor

Social media is growing at a fast pace, Twitter is going to hit the 200 million user mark early this year, Facebook has already over 500 million users and its founder already has a biography movie after only 20 years of his life. Impossible for search engines to miss out on the opportunity to surf the social media wave and use the huge amount of content being shared to display more accurate results, so they started in 2010!

Google started by crawling Twitter feeds and links, and provided a “Real time” search option which enables us to search for tweets on specific keywords. There was also a debate trying to determine whether links from Twitter provide some benefits to the pages they link to, and some recent findings would lead to believe that engaging in the Tweetosphere has to be on the 2011 agenda. Google also detects when people share links with friends on Facebook.

Bing on the other hand created a partnership with Facebook, in order for them to be able to use “likes” from users to affect rankings for pages using the Facebook “Like” button.

But this is only the beginning, and 2011 will reveal many more social media related algorithm updates.

#3 Slow typers discover the joys of Google Instant

Late 2010, Google added the “Instant” feature, which provides results as you type, without having to hit “enter” for the results to display.

For many, it is more of a gadget than anything else, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one having noticed high search volumes for keywords that aren’t complete… For example, if you use the Google Keyword Tool, you’ll notice some keyword suggestions are keywords that aren’t complete such as “car ins” or “seo consu”.

Where this simplifies search for the user, this also impacts websites focusing on some longer tail keywords, so I would recommend keeping an eye open to how this can affect your traffic.

#4 Local results take over

Firstly, Google (again) have made 2010 a year to tackle the challenge of local results. Most queries including a location keyword (city, suburb, postcode, country) now display local results.

After launching Google Places, for every local query, they displayed a map with pins between the sponsored results and the organic results. This apparently was not good enough so they changed the display in order for the local results to look more like organic results, with a map on the top right hand side.

This means owning your business on Google places is very important, as this can provide a valuable spot on the first page of Google, if done and optimised well.

Evidence shows that Google is investing heavily in local search (Marissa Meyer, VP Search, moved to Local, trying to buy Yelp) and wants to use maps in a more efficient manner. 2011 will see some interesting evolutions on that side, that’s for sure.

Secondly, where mobile search tends to blend in with mainstream search, it is still a great platform to provide bespoke local results for mobile. Google Places has been implemented on Android and can be used as a standalone app. More generally, apps developed on mobile platforms are using GPS location to display local results for businesses such as bars, restaurants, banks and more. This is where local online presence becomes key.

#5 Love is in the air between Yahoo and Bing

2010 was the year where they decided to merge their organic results in an attempt to compete against Google in a more efficient way. Bing had been increasing its market share but was mainly taking them from Yahoo so, when the merger took place, Google remained the big winner.

In Australia, Google still has 95% market share while Bing/Yahoo have 4.5%. The remainder is shared among small search engines such as Altavista and Ask. (source: statcounter.com, as of Oct 2010)

As an onside, this merger has affected Yahoo’s Site Explorer quite a bit and as a result it seems like link popularity and saturation have been fairly inconsistent these past few months. So hopefully early 2011 will see this great toll get back on track!

#6 How quick does your website load?

If you feel like your website takes a while to load when on a broadband connection, then it probably is getting penalised in rankings, compared to other quicker to load competing websites.

Google decided 2010 was the year to start applying the rationale “I want my users to find relevant sites which don’t take too long to load too avoid user frustration”. Based on opinions from SEOs all around the world, this has quickly become a key factor to website optimisation.

Using Yslow for example, you will be able to assess your website and get to learn about “minifying”, “css sprites”, “gzipping”, “http requests” and other ways of reducing the page loading time and have a website Google will want to put on top.

I actually think this is positive from a user’s perspective, it makes web browsing so much more comfortable, and it pushes web developers to clean up their code; thus improving the standards of the web.

#7 New guys on the block

2010 has seen the appearance or the discovery of some interesting new competitors to the big G (Google). Instead of replicating, these new search engines are actually innovating how to search for websites.

The first and probably most interesting one for SEO is Blekko, launched in 2010 with an interesting concept using slashtags which Rich Skrenta explains here:

“Slashtags let all of the vertical engines that people define on Blekko live within the same search box. They also let you do a search and quickly pivot from one vertical to another.”

So if you want to shop for the item you are searching, you would type “red dress /shop”.

The most interesting one which relates to social media: the Likes slashtag. Do you want to display results that your Facebook friends liked? Simply type “kitten videos /likes” !

Other search engines generating interest are Yandex in English (biggest SE in Russia) and DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo has actually been around for a few years now, but it’s only recently that it has been getting a bit more attention.

#8 Other Google related updates worth reminding

Ever tried converting measures or currencies using Google? Or getting simple questions answered directly without having to click into a website? That’s one of the 2010 added features from Google.

Search for “20 Australian dollars in us dollars” and you’ll get the converted currency below the search box. Search for “how high is the Eiffel tower” and again, you’ll get the answer below the search box (1,063 feet for those who are curious).

Another interesting SEO related discovery is the increased likelihood of getting your website crawled thoroughly if your brand comes up in the online reputable press (such as “The Australian”). It has been discovered that the Google bot will read about the brand in an article and would then go to the brands website and crawl it extensively. So get your PR teams working and you could just see your brand gain reputation online.

#9 Youtube Videos

Youtube is the second most popular social site after Facebook in Australia, and sees 35 hours’ worth of video uploaded every minute. To put this in perspective, Hunter Walk, Youtube’s Director of product management, explains: “If we were to measure that in movie terms (assuming the average Hollywood film is around 120 minutes long), 35 hours a minute is the equivalent of over 176,000 full-length Hollywood releases every week.”

2010 is yet the biggest year for Youtube in terms of popularity, meaning having an online presence using video has never been as important.

With its improved video optimisation options such as video transcripts, 2011 will be the year to jump on the band wagon, if you haven’t already, and get some videos uploaded and fully optimised in order to make sure you are found.

There is a lot of talk in the traps about website page speed. Google (via Matt Cutts and Webmaster Tools) has openly stated that page speed will be a factor into the ranking algorithm for 2010 and will likely roll out with Caffeine – faster the better and you’ll be rewarded for it.

Google Webmaster tools have been reporting sample data from sites that have page speed issues (you can find this in the Labs section under Site Performance). Within Google Webmaster it also suggests the supplied Page Speed Firefox plug-in (installs as part of Firebug) should be used to get more accurate and full data. This has been available since July 2009 so I guess we have had plenty of notice. This is already in play for AdWords where page speed will affect your quality score.

This tools reports in the order of priorities – which things are slowing the pages the most and also gives a suggested size savings if recommendations are carried out and, I mean, recommendations. It tells you specifically what files are problematic, which images should be attended to, which JavaScript files can be combined, which CSS definitions (within an include file) aren’t being used and can be excluded, DNS look-ups, browser caching and more.

Google introduced this idea of page speed officially in their blog in June 2009.

Not surprisingly it has been written up on many sites. Webpronews covered this in November 2009.

The goal here is to make the internet faster and improve the user experience. In turn, it is very likely that this will also improve traffic and conversions. Here’s an excerpt:

“If you’re serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven’t given much thought to load times and such, it’s time to readjust your way of thinking.”

Of course there is going to be debate about this within the industry, with marketers and developers. It’s just a new little layer to make our jobs a little more challenging.

At this stage the Caffeine update has yet to roll out. The last update Matt Cutts posted can be found here: Expect Caffeine after the holidays.

Here are some other sites to read up on this:

Google Page Speed Report Comes to Webmaster Tools
Site Speed Google’s Next Ranking Factor
Google Wants the Web to Function like a Magazine
WebPerformance Best Practices
Should Web Page Speed Influence Google PageRank?

Google’s Matt Cutts is brushing Vince’s update off as one of 300-400 per annum but webmasters and SEOs have turned their attention to Google CEO Eric Schmidt who publically stated in October 2008 that the internet is fast becoming a “cesspool” where false information thrives and “brands are how you sort out the cesspool.” It’s also been noted that the net’s founder, Tim Berners-Lee, has been making similar statements of late which leads everyone to believe that Google is giving brands a helping hand in the search results by creating an algorithmic brand element.

Those monitoring online brand conversations for their clients have noticed that an increase in brand chatter is often quickly followed by improved search rankings and consequently improved organic traffic.

So the key question being asked is how do unlinked brand mentions and social media buzz get incorporated into Google’s algorithm? Is it purely due to brand and product keywords regularly appearing side by side that results in the brand becoming associated with the product? Forum contributors observe that advertising campaigns often result in numerous video and image links – could this also be a factor?

One cynical observer pointed out that by favouring the brands Google makes them even bigger and, by so doing, increases the Adwords spend of smaller players trying to compete with the brands in the SERPs. Another sees it as a way of supressing affiliate sites which are seen as contributing to the current “cesspool”.

It’s unlikely we’ll get direct answers to these how and why questions so it’s probably best to simply be aware of the development and to factor it into SEO campaign planning.