Google Algorithm Changes and Its Effects

There has been a recent stir in the Internet and SEO community.  This is due to Google’s algorithm change that happened sometime mid-February.  Google is always striving to improve their search engine algorithm.  The goal of Google is to allow users type in any word on their search engine and instantly the most relevant content on the web appear for the user.  Google is usually constantly changing their algorithm, but the changes are usually minimal.  There most recent change however is thought to have affected as much as 17 percent of the web.  Companies like CNN said that it shifted around 1 billion dollars in their portfolio.  Companies like Mahalo.com said the change cost them 10% of their revenues and they had to force huge layoffs.  Google said that this change was an attempt to penalize content farms that just produce as much unique high searched content as possible.  Websites such as AOL, Mahalo, and the Huffington Post have suffered severe losses to web rankings on Google.  Google had noticed that it users were calling for higher quality of content.  That coupled with JC Penny ‘s manipulation of their old algorithm through using link farms caused Google to think it was time for a change.  One of the problems was websites with a great domain authority would be able to have their articles appear extremely high even if there was more relative content available.  For example Wikipedia is known for having great information, but not all of their articles are good.  Sometimes articles with little or no actual content appear at the top of Google searches.  This should not be.  Google is trying to do a better job of evaluating the content on the actual page.  Needless to say these changes caused quite a lot of problems for businesses that rely on web traffic from Google.  Some businesses said that their traffic got cut in half.  Other companies said they experienced a rise in their rankings.  People have brought up that it is unfair that Google is constantly changing it algorithm and it is hard for business to adjust.  I believe that this emphasizes an important point.  When conducting SEO it most important that you as a web designer or web consultant build first for the user and then for Google.  Not the other way around. Google is always trying to please its customers and they are always trying to emulate how people would see a sight and reward positive design.  If you are building for the customer first then Google will eventually come to you.

Let me know what you think:

• about Google?
• how they are constantly change how search results appear?
• how they change  how sites are ranked?