the reflexions insider

About a month ago, those of us who follow changes in Google’s search result rankings with a level of enthusiasm usually reserved for sports franchises woke up to something frightening: The Dewey Update.

Google normally makes daily changes to their search result rankings, so finding yourself in position 3 when you were in position 4 yesterday is not abnormal. But it was quite shocking for many webmasters to wake up one morning and discover their site completely removed from Google’s search results.

Google’s primary goal should be to deliver the best (i.e., most relevant) search results to its users. This is what ensures that users will keep coming back and what maintains Google’s marketshare. However, the reasons behind this update (although impossible to pinpoint) appear to be focused on ranking Google’s internal pages higher than others.

After the update, Google Books search results were suddenly ranking close to the ever-dominant Wikipedia pages. In addition, Youtube and Google News content was being displayed prominently over other commercial listings. This looks like a blatant abuse of Google’s position. Their mantra “Do No Evil” implies a commitment to being fair and balanced—manipulating search results to put their own pages first is clearly an unfair tactic that hurts both users and webmasters.

Fortunately, this update was short lived. After Google’s spin master Matt Cutts asked for feedback from the community, it appears the Dewey Update was reversed. For the time being, I am confident in Google’s commitment to fair search results.

What can you do as a webmaster to ensure your page gets a fair position? There is a multitude of SEO resources on the internet, and I plan to start including tips and tricks on this blog as well, so check back frequently. In addition, make sure you read Google’s own guidelines. Finally, if you are concerned about upcoming changes to Google’s ranking algorithm, check http://72.14.207.104 frequently. This is Google’s most up to date data server, and changes on it are periodically rolled out to their worldwide network.

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