Remember that Google Update?
September 25th, 2013 by
As all you SEO-ers know, at the end of May 2013, Google released a significant update to the ranking algorithm. Many businesses saw a complete shift in their rankings. Google stated the update was an attempt to minimize multiple listings for one website and give preference to bigger brand presence.
As the weeks and months continue to pass, they are constantly updating and tweaking “Penguin 2.0”. Many businesses are starting to see some recovery in rankings and traffic. Still, the update has left quite a few flaws out there.
As we all speculate, Google may be placing more weight on a site’s bounce rate. The lower your bounce rate, the better the content and site, right?
Doing some recent searches, I’ve noticed some pretty wonky results showing. For one of our clients, a login site is showing in the top results for broad key terms. Right after the update, it was showing in position 1! It has since fallen to around 7, but it’s still on the first page of results. Seems a bit silly to me.
It’s most likely that this page on the site has a very low bounce rate as you are most likely to log in and advance deeper into the site upon arrival. Still, does this mean it should be showing in the top spots for major search strings?
Another website that was simply a generic WordPress welcome page showed in the top spots for some legal search terms. Doing some recent searches, it doesn’t seem like this site is appearing on the first page of results any longer – thankfully!
Moral of the story is that even Google gets it wrong. As they are continually updating their ranking system, small business owners are likely to notice small dips and rises in their rankings. As a website owner, it’s important to always publish quality content and produce natural links to your site to withstand the constant changes by Google!
