Whitehatmedia News

14/03/2006  |  Google and the Jagger Update

Have you noticed lately really strange things on Google? Is the Page Rank of your website collapsing? Has your site disappeared from the top? Well it may be because Google is once again doing an update... Google does minor algorithm updates regularly, but once in a while, it implements a major algorithm update. It has recently carried out a major algorithm update, nicknamed the “Jagger” update series.

But why? It is actually very simple. First, this algorithm always needs to be adjusted in order to provide the best results because the web is evolving all the time.

Then, Google hates spam and like other search engines keeps its algorithm secret to prevent it from being exploited. So, by re-engineering its algorithm, it keeps “the bad sites” out of its top ranks.

The third reason comes actually from the expansion of Google itself. Because the Search Engine is now much larger than it was, with audio and video content spiderable and searchable, it needs to update its algorithm. Unfortunately this kind of update doesn’t last for only few days but few months!

If your website is suffering from this last update, your SEO or SEM provider should be able to help you. This latest update is going to have different effects on various SEO aspects of websites like the value of incoming links and reciprocal links, the impact of outbound links, the size of your site’s content...

You should for example have a look at the inbound and outbound links associated with your website to check their relevancy to your website’s topic. But also make sure your site is more spider friendly by including a sitemap.