The mayhem over Google's Florida update

November 16th appears to be the magic date when Google unleashed it's latest algorithm, code named "Florida." Yes, there's mayhem over the update as thousands of websites that once held top rankings are now gone. *Poof* - no where to be found. Others have lost top spots and have since been bouncing around search result placements leaving webmasters scrambling to figure out what to do next.

There's been a plethora of speculation on what algorithm changes have been implemented, such as:

1. Stemming: this is defined by SearchEngine Watch as the ability for a search to include the "stem" of words. For example, if you enter "biking" and a stemming feature was employed, you'd get results for both "biking" and for the stem word "bike."

2. Bayesian Spam Filter: a method of estimating using a probability analysis. The speculation is that Google has introduced such a filter to determine whether or not the material is spam. The problem with this method is that false positives tend to occur when large amounts of data are being analyzed.

3. Local Reorganization of Results: in this case results are displayed based on local inter-connectivity. Teoma/AskJeeves employs such a system in which case the initial results are re-ranked based on the links to and from topical centers. Back in September when Google bought Kaltix, a start-up company that builds personalized and context-sensitive search tools, it became inevitable that they too would start to show localized search results.

So just what is Google up to? Well, they have announced that they did indeed implement a stemming feature: "Google now uses stemming technology. Thus, when appropriate, it will search not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms. Any variants of your terms that were searched for will be highlighted in the snippet of text accompanying each result."

As for localized results, that's in too.

Now what? Ride the tide. Wait for the turbulent Google waters. Do you need to scrap your site and start over? No way, unless of course you tried to optimize your site with "tricks" such as invisible copy and bulging keyword stuffed tags! Ethical search engine optimization is now more important than ever!

Yes, you can still prosper in Google and believe it or not, there aren't really any "new" strategies you need to implement either! Keyword research is still as critical as it always was. A well-built site that employs an effective top-down structure is still necessary as is well-optimized, quality content. If there's anything that did change is that fact that incoming links to your site are even more important with the "new" Google. Does this mean you should fall for the gimics of link farms? Absolutely not!! It's important that you have relevant links coming to your site from relevant websites. Read more about how we can help you build a successful linking structure.

A well-built site that follows ethical search engine optimization techniques is still the only way to go.