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Google Algorithm Update Causes Havoc
by Pierre Zarokian and Derek Vaughan ©Copyright 2004

Sometime around November 17, 2003 Google went through its usual, 
if not entirely predictable, reshuffling of its search results 
that has become known in search engine parlance as the "Google 
Dance".

However, unlike other Google search results updates, the "Florida 
Update" - as this event has come to be known - caught a good many 
search engine professionals and online business owners off guard. 
The reason? Many search results were shifted dramatically from 
their previous positions, in some cases entire blocks of the 
first 100 results were replaced with new listings. This had the 
effect of 'demoting' previously high-ranking sites and relegating 
them to the netherworld of Google’s search results in pages 4 and 
up.

While the Florida Update has confused, frustrated and angered 
many professional search engine marketers and their clients - 
small to medium sized online businesses - Google has been 
characteristically silent on exactly what was changed in the 
search algorithm and why.

The only comment that can be found on the subject comes via a 
quote from Forbes magazine in which Wayne Rosing, vice president 
of engineering at Google, said the change is part of the Silicon 
Valley-based company's efforts to provide high-quality search 
results. 
 
"This particular change affected more people, but our testing 
shows there was a significant quality improvement for our users," 
said Rosing.

Shortly after the Florida update, several people reported an 
interesting trick to figure out if the new Google Algorithm 
affected your rankings. The trick is to add a non-existent 
garbage term to the end of your keyword with a dash before it. 
For example if your keyword is "laptops," you would search for 
"laptops -dsfdsfdf." However, you will have to add one garbage 
term for each additional word in your search term. For example, 
if your keyword is "used laptops," then you would search for 
"used laptops -dsfdsff -dsfdsfdsf." If you search for our given 
example, you will see different results in the top 10.

There are a number of theories that have emerged - we will list 
and examine a few below. Remember - these are people's opinion 
- not fact. Until Google makes some type of official 
announcement, speculation is all that we have.

Speculation #1: Google quashed commercial results to increase 
revenues in its AdWords paid listing program prior to going 
public. The idea here is that by relegating lucrative commercial 
search listings to the unread bottom of the search results, the 
businesses would have to resort to Google’s AdWords program to 
get back to the top of the search results. The resulting revenue 
increase would benefit Google by inflating the IPO stock price.

Speculation #2: This is just a regular and innocent attempt by 
Google to reduce the prevalence of search engine spammers. This 
theory notes that some of the demoted sites could be construed 
as "artificially" increasing their Google rankings via multiple 
interconnected and commonly owned and linked web sites. This is 
known in search engine marketing lingo as "gaming the system" 
or "spamming the search engines". Since Google frowns on the 
practice of interconnecting sites with one common owner simply 
to increase rankings, the update is viewed as justified to reduce 
these artificially inflated search results.

Speculation #3: In order to remove patent restrictions Google 
introduced a newer "patent-free" algorithm. There has been 
speculation that the technology that drives Google's search 
results may have been patented and licensed from Stanford 
University and/or The National Science Foundation. This theory 
holds that the algorithm change was implemented in order to 
avoid paying royalties on these patents.

Speculation #4: The Florida Update represents a complete and 
total change in the way that Google calculates search results. 
This group suggests that the Applied Semantics technology 
acquired by Google is now being used on a search-by-search basis 
- in effect applying an "expert system" to "learn" which results 
are best for users. As search after search is conducted, the 
system adjusts the results based on what users end up clicking 
on. This theory holds that traditional "spidering" on sites and 
current PageRank systems will become less and less important to 
search results.

Speculation #5: The Google systems and algorithm simply became 
overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and complexity of the Internet 
- in effect they have run out of computational overhead. Some 
have suggested that the new search results are in essence a "bug" 
in the Google code - brought on by the incredibly daunting task 
of evaluating the billions of web pages out there and sorting 
them into meaningful results. Further, the prevalence of blogs 
and blog cross-links seems to have thrown a curve into the Google 
algorithm mix. 

There are many, many more theories and variations on the above 
listed hypotheses. With all the secrecy surrounding Google's 
ranking algorithms, their updating process in general, and their 
future plans, we may never know what really happened in the 
Florida Update. Like I said before, at this point - speculation 
is all we have.

Based on an analysis and research done by us here at Submit 
Express, we have figured out that the new algorithm lowers 
rankings of those sites that are over optimized for those 
keywords that are repeated too many times in the following areas: 
anchor text of incoming links, Site Title and Page Content. Our 
recommendation at this point to those that have been affected is 
to analyze their own rankings first and make adjustments to their 
site by lowering keywords in some of those areas. Anchor text of 
the incoming links, seem to be the most prominent factor. We 
would suggest that if you used keywords in your site links, to 
remove them or not to use the same keywords too many times. Again 
our own analysis may not be 100% accurate, but this is our 
closest guess to what may have happened.

In addition to the above algorithm change, Google also started 
listing 3 Froogle results on top the Google search results for 
certain terms. If you are not familiar with Froogle, basically 
it is a shopping search engine that Google launched about a year 
ago. For more details see our newsletter article from January 
2003 at: http://www.submitexpress.com/newsletters/jan_30_03.html.

The Froogle results will only appear for certain ecommerce 
related products. You can see an example by typing in "Dell 
laptops" in Google.

We wish good luck to those that have been affected by this 
latest Google fiasco.

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Pierre Zarokian, President of www.SubmitExpress.com and Derek
Vaughan, Director of www.cpureview.com. Submit Express offers 
search engine submission and optimization services. CPU Review 
offers a hosting directory, news and expired domains list.
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