Google dances on Bloggers’ heads

Just to discuss the background, there was an article on the popular digerati blog Boing Boing yesterday on how a lot of popular adult-content blogs have been demoted as part of Google’s most recent alterations to its search algorithm. There’s a certain condescending undercurrent that really disturbs me about the discourse on this one.

Firstly, this is not a new issue. There was even a suit filed against Google by a firm that was demoted after one of Google’s periodic search-algorithm updates.

The SEO community refers to these updates as “Google Dances”, as the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) generally dance around a bit as Google’s various worldwide data centers receive the new databases.

That said, there has been nobody in the various pages I read that has provided an objective run-down of how the “new” results are less relevant that what was formerly provided. Violet Blue seems to have come the closest, with a thoughtful write-up on how this can come to be punctuated with a vitriolic and partially insubstantiable description of the “unsafe sex toys and skanky product” Violet deems to have unfairly taken her ranking.

This, of course, illustrates a few major problems, both for Google and the bloggers dependent on the traffic Google sends:

1.) Don’t depend on Google.
Search monoculture is one of the reasons there has been such a paradigm shift towards “folksonomy” based tools such as Technorati, Del.icio.us, and Digg to begin with. If you’re truly depending on Google as the sole means of achieving inbound traffic, then you’re simply not serious about running a website. Every serious website should be making maximum advantage of existing inbound traffic by means of permission marketing concepts, because the traffic you get today may not be the traffic you get tomorrow without hard work on your part.

2.) Who decides who is relevant?
The short, brief, and unfair answer is, on Google, Google does.

The longer, fairer, more thoughtful answer is that beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, and if those “skanky” sites have more numerous, and higher-quality (as seen by Google) inbound links, then they’re likely to have a higher SERP result as well.

If that’s the case, then it is clearly incumbent on the newly demoted websites to get on the ball and do some SEO and promotional/marketing work on their sites. Each Google update introduces its own improvements and liabilities, but the overall effect is generally somewhat neutral, and easily overcome by properly-executed link campaigns. The spammers, on the other hand, are generally brought to heel, sooner or later.

Another answer is that it is unfair for these webmasters to expect to retain a certain ranking forever, when millions of new sites are started every day. Just as Google supplanted AltaVista and Yahoo, so now are “newer” sites, deservedly or not, supplanting these older sites in both search-ranking and public attention as they have matured.

3.) What is relevance, precisely?
The assumption that because you were relevant, you are still relevant (I use “relevant” here in purely the search context) is a bit arrogant, and should only be uttered in conjunction with a detailed, objective rundown on why a particular site is more relevant than another, rather than relying on their status as an “A-list blogger” to demonstrate that relevance a priori.

4.) Did these sites really lose traffic?
Finally, I would like to see traffic comparisons for the complaining sites, as a measure of how much real traffic they have lost. I’m willing to bet that it is somewhat less than they think. People have gotten dependent on the idea of their Google placements being immutable….and both rightfully and wrongfully so.

I would love to see this tied in with the Boing Boing-asserted correlation between this Google Dance and changes to Adwords/AdSense. Google is, of course, notoriously secretive about those programs, and individual publishers and advertisers are prohibited from discussing proprietary info involving them, under penalty of banishment from the programs. But, thus far, I’ve read nothing that objectively correlates these two phenomena.

In short, people, stop crying and get to work, and pretty soon you’ll be able to brag about beating the spammers at their own game. (Unless, of course, you’re competing against YouTube, which is a prime example of the real problem: that being sites unrightfully achieving high rankings for sub-pages that may or may not be more relevant, on the basis that the originating site has scads of inbound links.)

Editor’s Note: Contrary to the tone of this post, my sympathies are actually with the affected bloggers, rather than monopolist-nouveau Google. It’s tough love, people.