Google – Good Guy, Bad Guy or Grinch!

Posted Thursday 13th December 2007 by Swapna in SEM News.

Businesses that rely on Google for higher rankings and achieving good sales target are probably finding December a difficult period, with Google being renowned for constantly changing algorithms and plummeting links to sites that it suspects is only using them to gain a high placement in search results, known as link-spam.

Google determines whether the incoming links are an “honest” representation of the site linking to you, so when it reduces their value in algorithm your website will fall dramatically down in the search engine results list. This could be fatal for companies/business that relies heavily upon organic search results, meaning a massive drop in trade for them.

Unfortunately, Google never provides an explanation into why brands drop down in the search engine results, but it is fair to assume that Google believes that these companies are buying and selling links and trying to increase their rankings. Google has recognised this as an unfair method, therefore ‘no follow’ tags are added to these reminding site owners that they do not want the paid links they provided to count towards a site’s position in search results.

It is a tense time and though Google has made no official warnings, it is hard to tell which way Google is going to make the move. However, three years ago Google had earned their nickname of The Grinch after the release of its new algorithm, both surprising and shocking the online world.

Argued to have shown double standards in their actions, Google still holds strong against link spamming as they have since reduced PageRank , affecting some big branded sites from seven out ten to just five out of ten. It was around this time last year that Google had made changes to their advertising system, Adsense, to counter sites that had been created only for attracting adverts it served. Though this year Google may make an example out of a site that is not following the guidelines, otherwise what would be the point in giving out warnings to companies.

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