Surprised at the lack of media coverage of the Florida update, I sent an email to a journalist with the "Online" supplement of the Guardian.
He decided to print the letter in today's edition of the paper. Here's the text:
*****
Google Overhaul
What has Google done in its latest update of its search algorithms?
I run a weblog called MediaJunk, dealing with trends in new media culture - particularly blogging and search engines. I have been running it for more than a year, but I have never got as much traffic as I have done over the past week.
The spike started when I posted an article about the recent Google Florida update (the Florida name comes from the tradition of naming hurricanes, as this is the effect updates have on search results!). In short, Google has made a major overhaul of its search results in an attempt to cut out spammers, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of sites have been penalised.
It looks to many people as though Google is targeting small businesses and trying to get them to take out AdWords.
I didn't believe Google's overhaul was malicious but I got so many emails that I began to have doubts. So I checked out some of the cases and I think some people may have a right to be annoyed. See particularly this entry. I'm amazed that no major media source has picked up on this yet.
*****
At lunchtime today, the BBC had a report criticising Google's update. It probalby had nothing to do with my letter. But I like to think it did :)
Comments
2 comments
People read too much into the way Google does things, at the end of the day it is an evolving beast.
Mr Crip,
I don't understand your point. Are you making two separate points?
Yes, I agree that Google is evolving. But how does that mean people read too much into how it does things?
Google is a black box. Its search algorithms are not revealed to the public. Naturally, there is a lot of curiousity as to how the black box works -- especially when it has such a huge bearing on traffic to websites and, consequently for some at least, on livelihoods.