Google Shakes Up Sites With Their Latest Algorithm Change
Have you ever browsed to a website and not been able to find the content that you are looking for quickly and easily? Spent ages searching round a site for something that you have seen previously and never been able to locate it again?
It’s a problem that a lot of end users find, and something that Google (Official Post) are hot on sorting out for us. In a corporate fairy godmother way, obviously! Google are making a direct response to complaints about user experience and how relevant search results are.
Image courtesy of jennawaites.com
So in the first of their announced algorithm changes for 2012, they are seeking out sites that make our browsing difficult and who show us lots of ads at the top of the page and are culling them to ensure a better user experience.
So what does that mean for your site? The official line from Google is that this algorithm change will affect less than one percent of sites, so if your site is full of informative and relevant content to your target market and you aren’t spamming with lots of paid ads then you shouldn’t even notice the difference. The changes due to hit immediately are designed to remove those sites from the listings that we hate to browse to, the sites that are just a home for links and ads that won’t do us any favours, which is great news for when we are trying to find something in a hurry.
Matt Cutts said of the algorithm change “If you believe that your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly.”
Once again Google is showing that they are ready to take action in order to deliver content that is readily available to users and it is up to site owners to ensure they are delivering what the Search Engines want as well as what users demand.
