Google's Ranking Algorithm - Named Florida
by Trey Collier
www.CommerceFriends.com
December 2nd, 2003
Google's Big Quake.
Mid November 2003, Google sent shock waves throughout the online community with a
change to their search engine results pages (SERPs). Google
updated their algorithm that ranks the results in their SERPs. This
algorithm change has been named "Florida" by WebMasterWorld.com in keeping with naming
Google's updates like weather service names hurricanes. (Cute huh!?) Thousands
of websites that once dominated the Top 10 positions for high volume search phrases,
have all but vanished from Google's SERPs.
News of this recent change by Google has even hit the mainstream media like the
New York Post's, "Google
Update Takes Bite Out of Retailers" and Forbes reprint of Reuters "Change to
Google ranking system irks merchants".
As one could imagine as a result of the "Florida Update", search
engine optimization forums have been inundated with messages, questions, rants,
raves, guesses, and even conspiracy theories. Google's Florida
Update has stunned many webmasters, casual website owners, 'black hat'
spammers, and even the most knowledgeable SEO experts, leaving most clamoring for
answers.
Why would Google change their algorithm?
To better serve up more relevant search results. This in nothing new.
Google has been changing and tweaking their formula since their inception.
This "Florida Update" should prove to be just another tweak in their ever
evolving quest to deliver the best and most relevant results.
Sometimes these updates introduce some unexpected results, called glitches or bugs,
that even surprise Google. It is, after all, only a program
that was coded by humans dealing with over 3 billion indexed pages with hundreds of
pieces of information on each page.
What are the Symptoms of lost rankings?
The most dramatic change in Google's SERPs seem to come from competitive search
phrases, keyword phrases that produce a volume of searches in the search
engines. These competitive search terms are usually targeted by SEO's,
Spam companies and webmasters alike, due to the sheer volume of searches using those
keyword phrases.
Digging a little deeper, I've discovered several
consistencies. The sites that dropped in ranking or
disappeared altogether...
- seem to be mainly home pages.
- seem to have the actual search phrase in the page's incoming anchor text
- do not appear to have been penalized or lost PageRank value.
- usually ranks well for similar search phrases other than the phrase used in
incoming anchor text links.
Pages that are now ranking well...
- seem to be inner pages that haven't been overly optimized
- have incoming links, backlinks, that don't contain all the words that
were in the particular search phrase
- are somewhat less relevant, than before the Florida update, for most
competitive search phrases
Theories & Speculation
AdWords Theory: Google may be trying to sabotage the SERPs,
thus creating an artificial need to purchase AdWords (Google's Pay Per Click
service) or they may be just trying to increase their income just prior to their IPO
offering early next year. Have you wondered why they choose this
time of the year, just before the Holiday Season, to implement this algorithm
change?
Response: As money hungry a machine as we would like to think that
Google has become, I really don't think that this was their motif. It is
only good for the short term and would be extremely harmful to them in the long
run. Can you say "Looksmart"?
Aggressive Keyword Stemming Theory: The new algorithm is much harder
as Google has stemmed the keywords. Basic stemming example:
The keywords, "Widget" and "Widgets" are combined as if they
were both "widget". So if one of your pages was
optimized for the plural and another page was optimized for the singular and there
was 500,000 competing pages for the singular and 750,000 competing pages for the
plural, then your two pages would need to compete with 1,250,000 pages making it
much more difficult to get into the top 10. Synonym Stemming may
also have be factored into the results. So if your keyword was
"car", then the SERPs could mix in pages for "auto",
"vehicle", "truck", "van", "coupe", ....,
etc., in addition to singular/plural stemming.
Response: Stemming, if used cautiously, could be quite useful to
searchers. Localization stemming could help search users when
searching, for example: "America" & "American"
or "Austria" * "Austrian" where pages containing either term
are used in the SERPs. Google, itself, has mentioned that it
does stemming, "when
appropriate". I have not seen any evidence that they are
using any aggressive stemming technique at this time.
New Spam Filter Theory: Google may be trying to introduce a Bayesian Spam
filter for sites that try to artificially increase their PageRank (PR) and Link
Reputation (LR) for major or competitive keywords and phrases.
Response: This does seem plausible. The original
intent of their PageRank was that if people linked to your page of information,
then it must be important and those pages with many incoming links were considered
"authoritative". This is the main crux of why website try to
trade links. Overzealousness or pretentious linking have
artificially driven up PR beyond its original intention. There are
even business's who's revenue model is solely to rent, sell and/or auction
links from their High PR pages.
This could explain why the missing rankings are mainly from home pages as it is
usually the benefactor of the incoming links and their incoming anchor text links
with keywords. Too many incoming links with the same keywords
could have "tripped" this filter to exclude them in its ranking
calculations. Without those incoming links with keyword anchor
text adding to the LR value the home page would most certainly
drop. As for the PR, PR values seems to still be intact (no
penalization of PR rank from what I can see). There are many more
tests that can and need to be performed to make any further
predictions. Any volunteers?
Possible implications for the Future
Google looks to have declared war on the "Spammers" and black hat SEO's with
their "Florida" ranking algorithm. Unfortunately, with war,
there is always some collateral damages that are inflicted on the innocent as well
as unintended friendly fire accidents. I believe that Google will
continue to refine and tweak their new rankings formula to minimize their collateral
damage and strike offending spammers with their version of a laser guided smart
bomb, the "Florida" update.
What should we do now?
I recommend that we continue to add good content to our websites, continue our
quality link building campaigns and don't do anything with the current pages on our
website just yet. There isn't enough evidence as to what
Google is exactly up to with their new Florida Update, nor have there been any
extensive testing done to substantiate any theories presented
herein. Google may even turn their knob back in the weeks or
months to come and everything will return to normalcy! I, for one,
am on a holding pattern until more information is available and what more testing
will reveal to me in the coming weeks.
Trey Collier has been a professional in
the computer industry since 1983, and on the Internet & eCommerce since
1993. He is a skilled programmer, database designer, data research analyst and
technical consultant. He has worked with companies like Harrah's
Entertainment, Smith & Nephew, Promus Hotel Corporation (now Hilton), First
Tennessee Bank, Bank of America and many more. He currently is providing search engine optimization consulting & SEO
services.
He can be reached at tcollier@commercefriends.com.
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