Google Search Results

One of greyest areas of Internet marketing is trying to understand the algorithms used to establish search engine results. At the end of last year, Google - the major search engine - carried out what has become known as the 'Florida Update'. This has lead to widespread confusion amongst website owners and Internet marketing companies because prevoiusly high ranked sites have suddenly disappeared of the radar, in other words instead of appearing high in the rankings, they may now be on page 4,5 or worse.

Whilst Google is saying nothing, one of the conspiracy theories to emerge are that Google has found a way to lower the position of high ranking sites to encourage marketeers to use the Adwords campaigns. Other theories are that Google is penalising sites that employed ways to 'spam the search engines'. On this latter point, there does seem to be validity in seeing sites that overplayed the use of keywords - repeating them or using them as the site navigation links - being downgraded.

The fact of the matter is that gaining a high search engine position is crucial to getting visitors. Yesterday's approaches may not be the best for today.

Search engine and directory owners will inevitably start to seek ways to capitalise on their strength and you should try to maintain an understanding of whether your marketing budget is being well directed. But at the moment, even the marketing 'experts' are a little confused.