This
update seems to have revolved around three main areas: domain age,
backlinks and PageRank.
Domain Age
It
appears that Google is presently giving a lot of weight to the age of
a domain and, in this SEO's opinion, disproportionately so. While
the age of a domain can definitely be used as a factor in determining
how solid a company or site is, there are many newer sites that
provide some great information and innovative ideas. Unfortunately a
lot of these sites got spanked in the last update.
On
this tangent I have to say that Google's use of domain age as a whole
is a good filter, allowing them to “sandbox” sites on day one to
insure that they aren't just being launched to rank quickly for
terms. Recalling back to the “wild west days” of SEO when
ranking a site was a matter of cramming keywords into content and
using questionable methods to generate links quickly I can honestly
say that adding in this delay was an excellent step that insured that
the benefits of pumping out domains became extremely limited. So I
approve of domain age being used to value a site – to a point.
After
a period of time (let's call it a year shall we) the age should and
generally has only had a very small influence on a site's ranking
with the myriad of other factors overshadowing the site's whois data.
This appears to have changed in the recent update with age holding a
disproportionate weight. In a number of instances this has resulted
in older, less qualified domains to rank higher than newer sites of
higher quality.
This
change in the ranking algorithm will most certainly be adjusted as
Google works to maximize the searchers experience. We'll get into
the “when” question below.
Backlinks
The
way that backlinks are being calculated and valued has seen some
adjustments in the latest update as well. The way this has been done
takes me back a couple years to the more easily gamed Google of old.
This statement alone reinforces the fact that adjustments are
necessary.
The
way backlinks are being valued appears to have lost some grasp on
relevancy and placed more importance on sheer numbers. Sites with
large, unfocused reciprocal link directories are outranking sites
with fewer but more relevant link. Non-reciprocal links lost the
“advantages” that they held over reciprocal links until recently.
Essentially
the environment is currently such that Google has made itself more
easily gamed than it was a week ago. In the current environment,
building a reasonable sized site with a large recip link directory
(even unfocused) should be enough to get you ranking. For obvious
reasons this cannot (and should not) stand indefinitely.
PageRank
On
the positive side of the equation, PageRank appears to have lost some
of it's importance including the importance of PageRank as it
pertains to the value of a backlinks. In my opinion this is a very
positive step on Google's part and shows a solid understanding of the
fact that PageRank means little in terms of a site's importance.
That said, while PageRank is a less than perfect calculation subject
to much abuse and manipulation from those pesky people in the SEO
community it did serve a purpose and while it needed to be replaced
it doesn't appear to have been replaced with anything of substantial
value.
A
fairly common belief has been that PageRank would be or is being
replaced by TrustRank and Google would not give us a green bar to
gague a site's trust on (good call Google). With this in mind one of
two things has happened; either Google has decided the TrustRank is
irrelevant and so is PageRank and decided to scrap both (unlikely) or
they have shifted the weight from PageRank to TrustRank to some
degree and are just now sorting out the issues with their TrustRank
calculations (more likely). Issues that may have existed with
TrustRank may not have been clear due to it's weight in the overall
algorithm and with this shift reducing the importance of PageRank the
issues that face the TrustRank calculations may well be becoming more
evident.
In
truth, the question is neither here nor there (as important a
question as it may be). We will cover why this is in the ...
Conclusion
So
what does all of this mean? First, it means that this Thursday or
Friday we can expect yet another update to correct some of the issues
we've seen rise out of the most current round. This shouldn't
surprise anyone too much, we've been seeing regular updates out of
Google quite a bit over the past few months.
But
what does this mean regarding the aging of domains? While I truly
feel that an aging delay or “sandbox” is a solid filter on
Google's part – it needs to have a maximum duration. A site from
2000 is not, by default, more relevant than a site from 2004. After
a year-or-so the trust of a domain should hold steady or at most,
hold a very slight weight. This is an area we are very likely to see
changes in the next update.
As
far as backlinks go, we'll see changes in the way they are calculated
unless Google is looking to revert back to the issues they had in
2003. Lower PageRank, high relevancy links will once again surpass
high quantity, less relevant links. Google is getting extremely good
and determining relevancy and so I assume the current algorithm
issues has more to do with the weight assigned to different factors
than an inability to properly calculate a links relevancy.
And in regards to PageRank, Google will likely shift back slightly to what worked and give more importance to PageRank, at least while they figure out what went awry here.
In short, I would expect that with an update late this week or over the weekend we're going to see a shift back to last week's results (or something very close to it) after which they'll work on the issues they've experienced and launch a new (hopefully improved) algorithm shift the following weekend. And so, if you've enjoyed a sudden jump from page 6 to top 3, don't pop the cork on the champaign too quickly and if you've noticed some drops, don't panic. More adjustments to this algorithm are necessary and, if you've used solid SEO practices and been consistent and varied in your link building tactics – keep at it and your rankings will return.