Web Moves Blog

Google Update Florida Solutions and Fixes
Over a month and a half ago I wrote an article about Google’s latest update dubbed Update Florida. I told our subscribers about how they might see their rankings drop in Google for prominent keywords for no apparent reason. Today I’m going to tell you what you need to do in order to fix your site and help restore your rankings.

First, let’s recap the main effects of the Google Update Florida as well as my original predictions of the root causes. Then I’ll explain in more detail the root causes as I see them.

Here’s the skinny on the latest Google Dance (from: 11/18/2003)
• Called “Update Florida” because similar to the last Presidential election, it was full of controversy and tons of upset people.

• Many people that had worked hard to build up solid and reputable backlinks appear to have been punished for no obvious reason. Even though their inbound links contain their main keyword phrase and have content related to their site in the title of the inbound linked page.

• Rankings have dropped for main targeted keywords but have not dropped for more specific keyword phrases. Rankings are not just for search engine optimization firms but are for web sites of every kind and variety.

• Results appear to have been repopulated from data that looks to be about 6 months old.

Original Google Update Florida Predictions and Explanations
• Probable: Google is either testing an updated algorithm or they are not factoring in the backlinks created in the past 6 months.

• Not Probable: SEO techniques that could be considered SPAM to Google are being filtered out in an effort to provide more relevant results. I’m doubtful on this one since the results are from about 6 months ago and many of them are not very relevant.

• Probable: Google is doing yet another deep crawl, we haven’t seen on in about 6 months, and they want to build a fresher, more relevant search base from sites currently out there that the Fresh Crawl GoogleBots may not be picking up.

• Not Probable: Many sites that have dropped off will never come back to the top because they have been penalized. As far as we know Google doesn’t penalize sites, they simply list them or delist them. Just like God, there is no gray area with Google, it’s either black or white. If you’re considered a black hat then your site will not show up anywhere in Google’s index, not even for the most descriptive keyword searches.

And the Verdict is In!

Let’s start from the beginning with the first prediction and move down from there.

Prediction no.1
Google is either testing an updated algorithm or they are not factoring in the backlinks created in the past 6 months.

Verdict: I was right and wrong on this one.

I was wrong about Google not factoring in backlinks created in the past 6 months. I was right about them testing new filters. Google has not dumped their old algorithm by any means. Instead they have created new filters to penalize sites who’s pagerank was artificially inflated due to less than reputable linking practices. What are less than reputable linking practices you ask? These include…

• Exact same phrase or a high percentage of the exact same phrase (text links) and alt text (image links) in backlinks. This catches folks caught up in link farms because they don’t rotate the text used to link to their sites.
Solution: Create a link to us page that has at least 5 different links using different keyword phrases. This way you spread out the concentration of text across the general theme of your site.

• Links from sites that are of a different subject matter than the site being linked to. When there is no mention of your subject matter in the body, title, keywords and description of the page linking to your site.

• Links from sites that don’t show up in search results for the keywords used in the links. This is because it is widely accepted that Google as implemented a localrank technology that determines whether or not your backlinks are from sites that rank for similar keywords used in the backlink. If so, then you’re fine, if not then you’re going to have problems getting to the top even if you have a high pagerank.

Prediction no.2
Not Probable: SEO techniques that could be considered SPAM to Google are being filtered out in an effort to provide more relevant results. I’m doubtful on this one since the results are from about 6 months ago and many of them are not very relevant.

Verdict: I was right on this one

Google is not penalizing sites for being overly optimized or for having keywords in the title, description and keywords of the page or having them in the Heading tags or anywhere else. The penalization is only coming into effect when backlinks are overly optimized and not from other industry resource sites. The results appears to be old only because the sites that ranked well earlier weren’t part of the linking scams and they returned to the top for that very reason.

Prediction no.3
Probable: Google is doing yet another deep crawl, we haven’t seen on in about 6 months, and they want to build a fresher, more relevant search base from sites currently out there that the Fresh Crawl GoogleBots may not be picking up.

Verdict: I was right again.

Yes, Google did another deep crawl and refreshed the backlinks of sites and update their PageRank about 2 weeks later. But this deep crawl is done on almost a continual basis now and doesn’t affect the rankings like many thought it did. Rankings were affected due to the implementation of new filters and that’s the only reason why.

Prediction no.4
Not Probable: Many sites that have dropped off will never come back to the top because they have been penalized. As far as we know Google doesn’t penalize sites, they simply list them or delist them. Just like God, there is no gray area with Google, it’s either black or white. If you’re considered a black hat then your site will not show up anywhere in Google’s index, not even for the most descriptive keyword searches.

Verdict: I was wrong.

Well I guess nobody’s perfect. Google is not necessarily “penalizing” sites but they are “filtering” sites out based on whether or not certain filters are triggered by the site for a particular keyword search. While a site may show up for a very detailed search or an off topic search, it may not rank well for a highly competitive (typically commercial) term if they have tripped a filter for that term.

In order to understand my predictions and conclusions correctly I need to explain a few more things that have bubbled up from the Google Update Florida and how they affect search results that are delivered today on Google.

Not only did Google implement filters but they also implemented new features which make it seem like the old algorithm was thrown out and they started over from scratch. While many will tell you Google isn’t as relevant as it once was I will contest that they’re changing to remain the most relevant search engine out there. Here’s a rundown on the new features.

• Google Implemented Stemming Technologies: Stemming means taking a root word and determining all variations of engine for that word. Now a search for “game sites” may return sites optimized for “gaming sites” “gamer sites” “gamed sites”. This increases the number of results delivered for highly targeted keywords and increases the dependency on solid natural optimization.

You can disable stemming by adding the “+” sign in front of each word you want to disable stemming for.

• Google Implemented Plural Searches: This means that a search for “knitting needle” and “knitting needles” will return the same results. Thus increasing the competition again since more results are returned for all keyword searches.

• Implementation of LocalRank: Localrank is a technology that looks at the first (x) number of search results. It can be any number the search engine specifies but is typically around 100. After it looks at those results it determines whether or not any of those sites have linked to you and then ranks sites based on how many “popular” sites for a specific search term have linked to you. This is why it’s critical to have someone help you with your link popularity campaign that understands the intricacies of linking and can provide advice that will not hurt you in the long run. Short term link popularity plans from unrelated sites will do nothing to help out your cause. For more information on LocalRank read this forum at WebmasterWorld.

• Internal Links Discounted: Links from within your site to particular pages in your site do not count as much as they once did. While this doesn’t mean you need to change your site link structure it is worth noting.

Artificial PageRank Deflated: Sites that have more than one link from a particular site are experiencing the law of diminishing returns. No longer are 100 links from a single site weighted as 100 individual links. This just makes sense. I mean, if site A has 100 links from a single site and site B has 20 links from 20 individual sites, I can guarantee you that the 20 links to site B will count more than the 100 links to site A.

In Conclusion
Well I’ll conclude my ramblings with a recap. Google has made many changes and has implemented several filters as well as new algorithm features to ensure it has the most reliable search results set on the internet. In order to climb your way back to the top you need to understand LocalRank, PageRank changes, Proper Link Reputation and Link Popularity, and be aware of anti-spam measures that need to be taken. It all boils down to common sense. Make your site user friendly and easy to navigate, encourage others to link to you by giving them some form of incentive, don’t use the exact same phrase in your backlinks, use good titles that explain what each page is about and keep it simple. By following these rules you can weather any search engine algorithm change and remain at the top with a lot less stress.

Author Bio:
Jason Dowdell is the founder and CEO of http://www.GlobalPromoter.com, a search engine optimization and marketing firm specializing in educating and empowering customer websites. Jason is also the founder of TurboPromoter.com, a web-based seo/sem project management suite comprised of professional seo tools, in-depth tutorials and an integrated help system.