Google's Latest Shakeup - What it means for website owners in India
1st March 2011

The day the earth stood still - for Google that is. The latest algorithm shakeup has shaken up the web design and seo coummunity. Everyone is scrambling to check how it affects their sites. Here's the post on Google's own blog - ' Finding more high-quality sites in search'.

What Does it mean for website owners, developers and SEO agents?

• The empire strikes back: Google has been facing a storm of critisicm about their search results especially with a retail business famously gaming its algorithm to drive Christmas traffic to their site. Now the've had enough and turning up the heat on link farms and others trying to game the system.
• No more quick and easy rankings: Google is going to take a very long hard look at the quaility of your site and the quality of the? links coming to your site. So forget about that quick climb up the rankings ladder. Its going to take some effort to improve the site rankings through useful content and careful link building. Although a lot of the old SEO tricks will still be relevant.
• Currently restricted to the US: Currently Google has only activated this majorly towards US based websites but its a matter of time before it turns it on worldwide. However we have noticed a sizable drop in traffic from the US to Indian or India based sites.
• Victims not always predictable: We have had reports that even good quality orginal content sites have been affected by these changes. There is no predictable way this algorithm change is going to affect sites although Google claims they are very much on target when it comes to removing low quality sites.
• The public? now matters: Through its very own Chrome browser Google has insights into the browsing experience of its users with tons of data being generated through the browser's Personal Block list feature. Although they claim not to be using it for blocking sites directly, they are definitely keeping an eye on the data generated. If visitors don't like your site they now can contribute to your downfall.
• Take A Long View: Since no one can predict the landscape till the churn from this google algorithm change stops, the best approach is to wait and watch and at the same time start planning on how to get some good original content onto your sites.

The message from google is clear - 'Get your act together or get suppressed. Be a nuisance and get swatted like a fly from the SERPs'. Only time will tell what Google has actually accomplished. Since all our clients have high quality sites I'm not worried. Or should I be?

Cheers,
Ron