Fresh Chat

Google recently undertook another of its regular major algorithm updates. This means it has made changes and modifications to the criteria by which it evaluates and ranks material.

As normally happens when such changes are made, it can have the temporary effect of throwing havoc into the marketplace resulting in rankings on search engines suddenly changing. 

This means that keywords that were working fine one week may not work at all the next. Some US commentators reported that for those organisations using SEM (i.e. buying ad words) traffic dropped by as much as 75 percent for a period, which in turn impacted on the revenue they were able to generate through web-based selling.

As the Google algorithm is secret, and Google never makes comment on this subject, market observers have been left speculating why the changes are being made and what they mean. Is some form of SEO or SEM being punished?  Will new types of content rank better in Google in the future?

The answer is that no-one knows.  The best advice is to sit-tight for a period of a few weeks while the changes work their way through the system. Then go back in and re-examine all keyword strategies to see if they will still be effective.