Last week, Google tweaked its algorithm and up ended the online reputation world. According to an article from Business Insider:
“Tuesday, April 24th, a day that by all accounts seemed normal until, for some site owners, a pretty noticeable drop in rankings changed things. Was it another, rougher iteration of Panda? An extension of that pesky “no ads above the fold” algorithm change? Was it the famed and feared over-optimization penalty that has been looming over our heads since Matt Cutts mentioned it a few months back?
It turns out that it was an entirely new search algorithm aimed at catching webspam, interestingly called “Penguin” (black and white like a Panda, but not nearly as large or imposing…) – this is the change Matt Cutts was referring to, but he told Search Engine Land that using the term “over-optimization” wasn’t entirely accurate, as the algorithm doesn’t target SEO, just webspam. Now, normally, most people would say site owners don’t have to worry about this type of thing, as long as their sites aren’t spammy. But the perception Google’s algorithm has of spam and the perception of spam that you as a site owner might have are different – so, though you may think you and your site aren’t going to be affected, it is always a possibility (though Google does claim that this change only affects around 3.1% of queries).The reason we waited about a week to blog about this is that we wanted the dust to settle. We wanted to see how people reacted, and what kind of effect Penguin would actually have on websites and their owners. This algorithm comes down, essentially, to the age-old battle of the “white hat” versus the “black hat” SEO. “Rewarding” high-quality and punishing black hat webspam is the goal of this algorithm, according to Google.”
To continue reading the full article from Business Insider, click here.
Momentum Factor’s work in this area was not punished — thankfully — but the black-hats and blog networks (which most of our competitors use) got killed. Our long-term strategy of real traffic, real authorship and real interaction rewards our clients once again.
If you need help with your online reputation, now is the perfect time to talk to us about BrandDefense.
