The Google “Bourbon” Update
Google uses hundreds of onsite and offsite elements within its algorithms to decide the rankings for a given search term. This is the ’secret sauce’ that determines your website’s level of visibility when someone searches for one of your keywords or phrases. For the most part, these rankings are relatively stable - meaning that if you search for “widget” today and then again next week, the results and rankings will be almost the same.
Every now and then Google will make a major change to this algorithm. When this happens, websites that were once in prominent positions for a huge number of searches may disappear entirely, while others that were all but invisible may have shifted to top positions. The reality is that potentially losing tens of thousands of search engine referred visitors can literally make or break a business – almost instantaneously. It has happened.
So why does Google do this? Some webmasters and search engine optimizers hunt out identified vulnerabilities of the algorithms to exploit them. Many of you may remember something that was especially popular in the late 1990’s. Remember web pages that had a few paragraphs of junk at the bottom of their pages that was preceded by “Don’t pay attention to the following, it is for the search engines"? At the time, search engines were not concerned with the fact that some webmasters and unethical SEO’s would use ‘black-hat’ techniques to improve their rankings. As a result, the search engines had to change the way they analyzed and ranked web pages in order to take these “bad” pages into account. They were then penalized via reduced exposure in the searches, which subsequently improved the objectivity of the major engine’s results.
The most recent major update was at the end of 2003, and is commonly referred to as the ‘Florida Update’. Upon its execution, many formerly prosperous websites found their once prominent placements all but gone – going from the top of the first page to absolutely nowhere to be seen within the top 100 results returned.
Don’t Panic…
All of us here at SpiderSplat Consulting are constantly monitoring not only the search engines and their results pages, but also the various webmaster and SEO forums. In addition, we use only white-hat SEO techniques - which means that even while many other sites lost precious rankings, none of SpiderSplat’s clients have ever experienced a major loss in position or traffic due to the Florida update or any other before or since.
What does it mean for my site?
On May 15, 2005 people began reporting major changes in Google’s search results. This latest reindexing - since dubbed ‘The Bourbon Update’ - seems mainly to have attacked those sites that have blatantly “over-optimized". When SpiderSplat is engaged to optimize a website, we do so utilizing both onsite and offsite elements. This helps ensure that the site will not be earmarked by the search engines for a similar offence. At the same time, the update seems to have increased the rankings for many websites that were trapped in the Google ‘Sandbox’ up until now.
What happened in the Florida update?
A detailed diagram of the analysis of what happened during the 2003 Florida Update can be seen at
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-florida-chart.htm
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