Google releases two new ranking algorithm updates

It seems that Google releases a new ranking algorithm update every week. Last week, Google’s Matt Cutts announced that there is another algorithm update that targets web spam. What does this mean for your rankings and how must you react?

Google doesn't like web spam

“In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content.While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”

Things that Google considers spam

Google’s announcement shows two examples. The first example is a page that is stuffed with hundreds of keywords in a comma separated list.

Google doesn’t want that type of pages in the search results. The second example is a page that has normal text. However, the text contains keyword optimized links that are totally unrelated to the surrounding text.

Other things that Google considers spam are linking schemes, misleading redirects or purposeful duplicate content.

Google says that the right kind of SEO is fine

Many people confuse search engine optimization with spamming. Spamming and SEO are two totally different things. Google’s latest announcement also contains a statement about “white hat” SEO:

"Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to find. [...]

 'White hat' search engine optimizer often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines."

How to react to Google's latest ranking algorithm

Google released two algorithm updates: a Panda update on April, 19th and the update explained above on April, 24th. If your web page rankings dropped on April, 19th, then you have to improve the quality of your web pages.

If your page rankings dropped on April, 24th, then you have to remove all spam elements from your web pages. If you think that your website was flagged by mistake, you can inform Google through this form.

Only use white-hat SEO methods if you want to be on the safe side

Use shady SEO methods and Google might penalize your website. If you want to be on the safe side, only use white-hat SEO methods.

Official Google information: 10 recent algorithm changes

Last week, Google's Matt Cutts published a list of 10 recent ranking algorithm changes in an official Google blog. Do these changes affect your website rankings? Do you have to adjust your web pages for the new algorithm?

What is new in Google's ranking algorithm?

Here's the official list:

1. For queries in languages where limited web content is available (for example Hind or Icelandic), Google will translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results.
2. The snippets on the search result page now show more page content and less header/menu content.
3. Google finds that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so they are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.
4. Autocomplete predictions in Russian have been improved.
5. People who are searching for software applications will see more rich snippets, like cost and user reviews, within their search results.
6. Google retired a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.
7. Some queries get fresher results. This change impacts around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.
8. Google adjusted how they attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher on Google's result page.
9. Date-restricted queries have been improved to ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.
10. Autocomplete predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic have been improved.
Matt Cutts does not go into detail. The most important change seems to be that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant as before. This probably affects the texts in your website navigation most. If the navigation text was "green widgets" before, this would give the linked page a boost for the term "green widgets". Matt Cutts says that this has changed.

How do you have to change your web pages?

Google says that you shouldn't focus on the ranking factors above:

"Before you go wild tuning your anchor text or thinking about your web presence for Icelandic users, please remember that this is only a sampling of the hundreds of changes we make to our search algorithms in a given year, and even these changes may not work precisely as you’d imagine."

Google uses many different elements to specify the position of your web pages on the search result pages. The Top 10 Optimizer analyzes all important elements that determine the position of your web pages and it also tells you how to adjust your pages so that they get the best possible rankings.

Google is continually improving the ranking algorithms. If you want to keep your rankings, and if you want to get better rankings, regularly check your web pages to make sure that they are compliant to Google's latest ranking algorithm.

The impact of spammy backlinks on your Google rankings

Can low quality links or links from spammy websites have a negative effect on the rankings of your websites on Google? If spammy websites point to your site, should you act?

Three things that you can do when you discover spammy backlinks

Most websites have links from low quality websites and it is very difficult to do something against these links. You cannot influence which websites link to your site.
For example, a competitor could add your website to a link farm network or the competitor could spam search engines and directories with your URL.

If you find that low quality websites link to your site, you can do several things:

1. Relax and let them link

   Linking is a significant factor in Google's ranking algorithm but it is just one of many factors. Other factors are the content of your web pages, the site structure and the appearance of a keyword in the different web page elements.

2. Ask the webmaster to remove the links

   If you have a high quality website and get links from spammy websites, try to contact the website owners and ask them to remove their links. Google will not help you with that. If the webmasters of the spammy website are not cooperative, don't worry and focus on the links that are under your control.
   

3. Optimize your links and your web page content

   Optimize all of the factors that influence indexing and ranking on Google.  It analyzes dozens of factors that influence the position of your website in Google's search results and it shows you what exactly you have to change so that Google will list your website on the first result page.

Focus on things that can be influenced by you
Google knows that you cannot influence all of the links that point to your site. Low-quality links come from websites with low Google rankings and they cannot pass much ranking power to other websites. Chances are that Google simply ignore these links for the ranking algorithm.
For that reason, you shouldn't worry too much about links to your website that you cannot control. Focus on web page optimization and high quality link building.