Archive for September 29th, 2008
Over the weekend it emerged that Google had performed a major deep crawl and updated PageRank (PR) data for sites in their index. Many webmasters seem to be as confused as ever as to why in particular their sites have seen PageRank increases or decreases, but one thing seems to be ringing a resounding bell across many SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) forums.
Webmasters in the SEO forum at Digital Point, for example, are expressing their surprise that sites which they spent considerable time optimising and promoting seem to have had their PR decreased while sites they relatively neglected saw PR go the other way.
Some webmasters are suggesting that the only possible reason for this is that Google could now be taking a dim view on the excessive promotion of websites using social bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon and Technorati.
Google may now be considering the over marketing of sites within these channels as attempts to spam their index in order to unfairly rank higher in search results. The search giant is constantly tweaking its algorithm in order to filter spam and ensure the integrity of its search results continues to remain the most relevant and most highly regarded in the industry.
Spam filtering measures such as this, if the claims are founded, are just another in a long line of major directional changes Google have implemented into their search engine results spam filter to prevent the poisoning of their index. In the past they have dropped the relevance of the keyword tag, penalised sites which enter into controversial link exchanges and, even developed measures (allegedly) to prevent spammers who create short term sites benefiting from high search result placements in order to sell their dubious spamvertised products (search engine poisoning). These are just a few.
If it is indeed true that Google have rewritten their algo to weed out social bookmarking spam, could this spell the end of the social bookmarking phenomena which has surged in popularity in just a few short years, heavily due to the popularity of the medium with SEO experts and webmasters?
We will be watching developments closely and welcome your comments in the meantime.
