The predicted changes by Google this summer have been revealed by Matt Cutts.
If you do not have time to listen to the Matt Cutts video, a short summary of the main points is:
- Penguin 2.0 – nearly ready, to tackle more of the web spam
- Advertorial – paid ads should not pass PageRank, but many currently do – this is being hit by planned changes.
- Complaints on specific areas – eg payday loans – are producing specific action
- Changes to deny links from link spammers.
- More sophisticated link analysis trials are underway.
- Hacked sites – give more info on this in webmaster tools. In fact more information all round in webmaster tools.
- Authority detection. A bit of positive action for good sites with good content.
- Panda – soften the impacts here…
- Reduce amount of clusters from sites shown in the lower pages of search results.
Comment by Rachel Cornish
There are no real surprises here with these planned SEO algorithm changes, except no specific mention of social, but this will be impacting many of the area above.
The changes to the paid ads are well overdue as many sites have been gaining through risky paid link schemes for too long. It appears to have been a lottery over which ones have been dropped first, and when all are downgraded the market will be fairer again.
We wonder what is behind softening the impact of Panda – probably some big name sites have been hit by dodgy SEO tactics,.
The biggest shake up of all might be from the ‘sophisticated link trials’ that could produce very significant changes. The desire to allow small businesses a chance to be top might produce some shocks for over optimised large websites. This is the area to watch most carefully.
ExtraDigital continually monitor Google’s published SEO advice, along with conducting our own research on search visibility to ensure we continue to provide the very best SEO services to our clients.
