Yes, Google is updating, changing, shifting, call it anything you like but don’t call it dancing. So what’s happening? Search results are shifting around like mad, that’s what’s happening. What does it mean? I can’t tell you until it stops moving, which may take another couple weeks.
We’ve been watching this since about last Friday, and my phone has been ringing off the hook. Everyone who thinks I called the November 2003 update correctly is waiting for me to pull another rabbit out of my hat… I can’t promise a rabbit, but I will have an opinion once this thing settles down and we can look at what’s changed.
Right now, it’s not over, and we can’t do anything but watch, or more appropriately, do something productive. Unfortunately, it’s my job to watch these things, so I press on….
As does Matt Cutts, director of search quality at Google and the man who must:
- pretend that he isn’t GoogleGuy
- direct this kind of thing to happen in the first place
- deal with all the positive and negative feedback
- direct the inevitable adjustments
- make an effort to explain all this to the webmaster community without actually explaining it.
Matt is posting “weather reports” on his blog, and that’s a good place to start. Start with that most recent update, and work back. If you have a few minutes to spare each day, it’s worth reading Matt Cutts. The writing is very entertaining, in a “we hold all the cards and you can’t see them” kind of way.
For more on the “Mick Jagger of Search*” check out Aaron Wall’s excellent interview with Mr. Cutts. Aaron is a good guy, a former student in my SEO coaching program, and he really did a great job getting Matt to open up.
* that’s a handle he probably likes about as much as I like being the “Neil Young of Search Engine Marketing“…
Dan Thies
