Google Update Jagger

Those of us who are in the business to trying to get people to websites will know that Google has, over the past month done a major update to it's system of ranking websites. This is probably one of the biggest updates I have experienced since I have been in the business.

Google updates are given names on the Webmasterworld forums, just as hurricanes and typhoons are. The current one is known as "Update Jagger". The analogy of a Google update and a hurricaine rings true for many webmasters, as the results can be quite devastating if a site is not treated favourably. Much fingernail biting takes place among webmasters during one of these updates.

Personally, I find it interesting to know that a change is taking place, and it is helpful to know specific technical anomolies that Google doesn't like, but these updates don't change my actions one bit. I make what I consider quality sites, and am always finding ways to make them faster, more concise, well categorized and with well written code. Above all, I try to make sites that a person would want to go to, and find interesting. If I'm doing a shop site, I have extensive, original descriptions for products, as it is better for the person who uses the site. It just so happens that Google likes these things too, so I guess that means the guys at Google are on the right track, and also probably explains why this search engine is so popular. They rank pages that are useful to people.

The new update is reaching it's final stages now apparently, and the results look great. There were an increasing number of what we call "scraper sites" which are machine generated sites with millions of pages of rubbish and stolen content, laced with adsense ads. Most of these cursed things have thankfully now been removed from the index.

By the way, I still use Google myself. It's still the best. I know a lot of people have been saying otherwise, but many of them are probably angry webmasters who have had their sites lose rank. Or perhaps scraper site owners who no longer have $2000 a week pumping through their adsense accounts and have to find real jobs, like making QUALITY websites.

Seriously though, during the last month, I have found myself going to other engines for certain obscure searches, but that is to be expected during any update of a large system. It must be a real challenge to do a month-long update on a system the size of Google's and keep it live at the same time, let alone maintain quality of results. It amazes me how many webmasters were complaining in the early stages, saying how bad the results were for certain keywords etc. I don't even consider the serps as final even now. I don't know how Google works internally, and I'm not a software architect but surely there must be a massive amount of processing that occurs after any algorithmic update given the amount of data. I don't see how things couldn't be all over the place half way through that. Google have been moving towards a constant update cycle for some time, and eventually these chaotic updates and will probably be a thing of the past.