Welcome to the first in a new series of regular blog posts here on the Pierce Communications blog, where we’ll be giving an overview of the latest developments in SEO and Internet Marketing.
Below are summaries of the biggest news and latest devel0pments in the world of search:
Google launches Farmer/Panda update [source]
Google has implemented a big algorithm update on its search results – for now in the USA only but due to be rolled out in the UK within weeks – that is aimed at reducing the rankings of websites that produce large amounts of low quality content. Sites like Mahalo and ArticleBase.com have seen their rankings on Google.com drop significantly due to this update. This algorithm update was first called ‘Farmer’ by the search industry as it was aimed to fight content ‘farms’. Google has since revealed its internal name for the algorithm update is ‘Panda’ after one of the engineers involved in this project.
Google continues to downgrade exact match domains [source]
Websites that have keyword-rich domain names (for example red-shirt-company.com) are expected to see continued drops in rankings as Google confirms it continues to downgrade these websites in favour of big brand sites. In a recent video Google’s Matt Cutts says that keywords in a domain name are less important and new sites should focus on memorable brand names instead.
Google buys BeatThatQuote.com [source]
Google has bought the UK financial price comparison site BeatThatQuote.com. This is a strong indication that Google continues to expand its service offering, aiming to keep users longer on Google’s own properties instead of sending them to other websites. However there are concerns that by buying these types of sites Google may open itself up to extensive antitrust lawsuits, as by giving preference to its own sites Google may be abusing its monopoly status.
Hi Barry,
As someone with a few keyword rich domains I haven’t noticed any drop in rankings for keyword rich domains.
It’ll be interesting to see how Google downgrades exact match domains, particularly with the importance of navigational searches in Google.
@Michael yeah it might just be a case of Google clamouring about exact match domains instead of them actually doing anything significant about it. At least half of what Google is publishing about SEO is PR spin and disinformation aimed at brainwashing SEOs and webmasters in to playing by Google’s rules.