|
Google’s Jagger Update Completing Cycles
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.
November 22 2005
» Click here for  PDF &  Word
Versions
Ever since Google introduced its latest algorithm update in September,
a fair amount of column space has been dedicated to telling webmasters
and small business owners to wait until the update is complete. In so
much as it can be said that the Jagger Update will ever be complete, the
final cycle of the immediate update appears to be playing out.
Jagger was a different sort of algorithm update for Google. Its infamous
predecessors, Florida and Hilltop were generally limited shifts in the values
Google assigned domains based on content and links. After the immediate
punch of previous updates, the search engine results pages (SERPs) would
generally return to a stable and predictable state. SERPS generated by Jagger
are expected to constantly update themselves with a greater degree of flux
and change.
So, what exactly happened during the Jagger Update and what might it mean
to your website? Quite a bit as it turns out.
The Jagger Update was introduced for three main reasons. The first was
to deal with manipulative link-network schemes, sites generated with scraped
content and other forms of SE-Spam. The second was to allow and account
for the inclusion a greater number of spiderable documents and file types.
The third was to allow and account for new methods of site acquisition beyond
the use of the spider Googlebot.
The update made its first public appearance in late September but had its
greatest impact in early October. At that time, hundreds of thousands of
websites that enjoyed previously strong listings were suddenly struck and
sent to the relative oblivion found beyond the second page of results.
Most of those sites lost position due to participation in what Google obviously
considers inappropriate linking schemes. This was actually one of the first
conclusions we came to in late September based on the experience of a few
clients who joined link-networks that had not been recommended or vetted
by our link-experts. This is now backed up by discussion in various search
engine forums. While most of those hurt by this part of the update are good
people running honest businesses, Google put out notice that irrelevant
link-networks, no matter how simple or complex, are unhealthy additions
to what might otherwise be a good website.
The problem Google faced was some webmasters misunderstood what links are
for and how Google uses them to rank documents. For some unknown reason,
many webmasters or site administrators participated in wholesale link mongering,
bulking up on as many inbound links as possible without consideration of
the most important factor (in Google’s estimation), the relevance
of inbound links.
Now, Google appears to be applying filters based on historic
data it has
collected about all sites in its index over time. In other words, Google
likely knows a lot more about documents linking to a particular website
than the person who placed or requested the link in the first place. SEOs
and webmasters should brush up on the “Information
retrieval based on historical data” patent application Google filed on March 31, 2005
for highly detailed information.
Google is judging sites on who they link to along with who links to them.
Before the update, a link from your site to an irrelevant site was more
a waste of time than a waste of opportunity. Today irrelevant links seem
to be both. Google’s desire to offer stable and highly relevant SERPS
while preventing outright manipulation of those SERPS was the biggest cause
of the shift.
The second and third reasons for updating the algorithm at this time is
the allowance for indexing documents or information obtained through alternative
sources such as Google Base, Froogle, and blogs and other social networking
tools. Google’s stated goal is to grow to include reference to all
the world’s information. That information is being expressed in multiple
places using several unique file formats, some of which are difficult to
weigh against others. By checking the file or document in question against
the long-term history of documents linking to it, Google is better able
to establish its theme and intent.
Mass adoption of blogs, while promoted by Google gave the search engine
a number of problems. Webmasters and search marketers will take almost any
opportunity to promote their sites, by any means available. Blogs provided
ample opportunities and soon issues ranging from comment spam to scraped
content Splogs started to gum up the SERPS. By comparing document content
with the history of other related documents in its index, Google has become
much better at spotting blog-enabled spam.
Google faced problems with forms of search engine spam such as fake directories
and on-page spamming techniques such as hiding information in CSS files.
The Jagger Update seems designed to deal with these issues by applying Google’s
vast knowledge about items in its index against every document or file it
ranks. A site that scrapes content, for example, might be weighed against
the documents that content was originally published on and the intent of
the republisher. One that hides information in the CSS file will similarly
trip Google’s memory of how the same domain looked and operated before
the spam-content was inserted.
The third reason for the algo update comes from the expansion of Google
itself. Google is now much larger than it was when the Bourbon update was
introduced in the early summer. Audio and video content is spiderable and
searchable. Google’s comparison shopping tool Froogle is starting
to integrate itself in with Google Local, just as Google Local and Google
Maps are beginning to merge. There is some speculation in the SEO community
that Google is preparing to integrate personalized data into the search
results served to specific individuals. A strong assumption is that Jagger
is part of Google’s movement towards personalization though there
is little to firmly point at to support this idea.
If your website is still suffering the lagging effects of the Jagger Update,
your SEO or SEM vendor should be able to offer good advice. Chances are,
the first thing he or she will do is a point by point inspection of your
inbound and outbound links associated with your website. Next, they will
likely suggest making it easier for Google to spider various document file
types in your site by providing an XML sitemap to instruct Google’s
spider cycle. Lastly, they will likely suggest a look at how website visitors
behave when visiting your site. Site visitor behaviours will play a part
in Google’s view of the importance and relevance of sites in its index.
The introduction of Google Analytics provides webmasters with a lot of free
information regarding site visitors, along with other information on how
the site fares on Google’s search engine. It also provides Google
with a lot of information about sites running it. More on the effect of
Google Analytics on the SERPS next week.
BACK to
the StepForth Search Engine News
|
