Webmasters Wary of Latest Google Tweaks:
"Some sites have fallen from high rankings to the nether reaches, while others have gained better slots. While such shifts are nothing new, this time around some observers say it appears that Google is trying to penalize sites using the most aggressive search-engine-optimization techniques with keywords and links to rank well on Google results. "

The problem is that along with these abusers of search engine optimization, many more innocent sites have fallen as well, said Barry Lloyd, CEO of Clogher, Ireland-based search-engine marketing company Microchannel Technologies Ltd.

"It's gone from a Google love fest to some of the most vitriolic attacks I've ever heard," he said of the reaction to the latest tweaks. "My genuine belief is that there's been too much collateral damage. A lot of people not deliberately gaming the system have been affected."

Google, as a matter of policy, does not discuss changes to its search engine algorithm. A spokesman said that the Mountain View, Calif., regularly tweaks its algorithms to improve the relevancy of search results.

"This is why it is common to see movement in the ranking of sites on Google search results pages," he said.

It remains to be seen to what extent the common user of Google has noticed the shifting positions of sites in search results. Search-engine marketers and optimizers readily admit that they watch the results with hawk eyes, noticing the slightest shifts in rank.

To Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, the current spat of debate filling Webmaster and search-engine message boards is part of the regular cycle of complaints that follows a Google change. Quantifying whether the latest shifting is producing better or worse results is difficult since the results vary depending on the search query.

"If your job is to optimize a site for a particular term, then you know intimately what site comes up for that term," Sullivan said. "For a typical Google user, they probably won't notice anything."

Along with link tricks, some sites and search-engine optimizers have created doorway pages. The pages are designed specifically for search engine spiders indexing Web pages and are optimized to match coveted keywords. They are often invisible to actual users or appear as a quick introductory page that leads into the main site.

"(Google) had to come up with a way of overcoming the gaming of their algorithm because it was becoming so corrupted," Lloyd said.

In the course of combating techniques what Google and others consider search-engine spam, Google's algorithm changes also appear to have caught other sites in the crosshairs, Lloyd said. The changes appear to be affecting the rank of commercial-oriented search terms the most, ones where over-optimization is often common, and to be hurting sites that use a given keyword term frequently in the site or in the domain, Lloyd said.

At the same time, Lloyd and others have noticed that the results for some search terms seem more focused on directory listings or non-commercial sites rather than commercial sites. On one example, Lloyd tried searching for "Web design Calgary," expecting to find Web design companies in Calgary, Canada. Instead the first result was the site for the Calgary Flames hockey team.

More than anything, the most recent brouhaha over Google algorithm changes points to the danger of relying too heavily on search-result positioning for one's business, experts say.…

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