Search Engine Updates on Google and Yahoo

The SEM community has been in quite a buzz lately over some search engine updates on Google and Yahoo.

During the month of October, Google made several updates to their Google PageRank that had SEM experts speculating whether or not Google was penalizing blogging networks or just sites that sell text links. Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal was able to confirm with Matt Cutts that the recent search engine update was related to paid linking and advertisement links which influence Google PageRank.

On Halloween, Yahoo announced a search engine update on their blog. They’re rolling out some changes to their crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While no date was set for when these changes would be complete, it’s sure to create more buzz within the SEO community.

For the old timers, major updates right before the holiday season shouldn’t be a surprise. Traditionally, Google and other search engines have “dropped bombs” in Q4. In 2006, Google changed how they scored landing pages, sending PPC managers into a panic. The year before that, Google did an update to their Google AdRank algorithm that created an SEM buzz.

My advice to business owners is to stay on top of the trends, and weather the storm because Q4 isn’t just the holiday season, it’s search engine hurricane time.