Special Google Edition - Communiqué From The Desk of Alan K'necht

I'm sending you this special edition of my regular communiqué because of an urgent issue with the world's largest search engine, this issue/problem has already been covered to some degree by CNN and other media outlets, but here's my take on it.

Has Google Gone Crazy?

On approximately November 25, 2003, Google (the most popular) search engine started to readjust it's ranking for all web sites in its database. This wasn't a minor adjustment, which I've been witnessing for the past 6 months or so, but a full blown shuffling of the deck. In the search engine optimization game (helping companies get high position in search results), this is known as a "Google Dance".

What made this dance different is how it affected so many top ranked sites. Sites that had been ranked in the top 5 for upwards of 3 years simply disappeared. Other sites, which have little or no relevance to the search term all of a sudden, are ranked number 1. Many companies who relied solely on traffic from Google's search results to drive their on-line sales have seen web site traffic drop to practically zero. What's even stranger is that this pattern doesn't hold true for all search terms and there is no rhyme or reason to which ones are affected (in my opinion). Some theorists speculate it's a programming bug while others believe it's a deliberate act and an attempt by Google to drive more companies to participate in the pay per click program (Google Adwords). Of course many of these same people believe there is a conspiracy behind everything.

So the question is, has your site been affected? In the aftermath of this major shake up several good articles have been published that address the question "Is this a bug in Google's code or a permanent change to the mathematical algorithm that Google uses to rank sites?". The jury is out with the majority of search engine specialists starting to lean towards a permanent change. My opinion is that something went wrong, but unlike a problem a few months back where word leaked out about the problem which Google fixed a week or so later this seems to be something different and on a completely different scale.

I'm still investigating this and will let you know what's up as soon as I'm a 100% sure. Fortunately, most of my search engine positioning clients were relatively unaffected by this. A few did suffer on one key word phrase, but picked up on another.

If you want to see how you faired, check out http://www.scroogle.org/. Simply enter in your key word phrase and it will tell you how many sites that used to be in the top 100 are no longer there. You'll also see these sites previous rankings and scroll down a bit and you'll see the new listings. If you want to find out if your site is listed here simply do a find ("ctrl + f") and enter your domain (i.e. knechtology.com).

If you want to find out more, here are some interesting articles on this issue:
http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/buyads.htm
http://www.searchengineguide.com/lloyd/2003/1125_bl1.html

Closing Thoughts

If you have any questions or need help with search engine positioning, please feel free to contact K'nechtology Inc. directly. Just to remind you that my services and the services of K'nechtology Inc. are always available to help you with your technology strategies, search engine optimization, IT project management, Internet/web development needs and software reviews. Subscribe to future newsletters or find links to previous newsletters, columns and product reviews at news.knechtology.com

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