Be afraid, be very afraid!

Webmasters fear the next Google update.

(October 4 2004) Search engine marketers tremble in anticipation of the next Google update.

Why? Well, last fall Google launched its infamous "Florida" version of its database and search result algorithm, on November 15 to be exact. A large number of webmasters found their well optimized web pages sink into oblivion, while others could enjoy an unexpected rise to the top of the search engine results.

Clearly, Google does not have to do the same this year. As a matter of fact, they would never dream of disclosing their algorithm or long term strategies in this area.

However, there has been no major changes in rankings for quite a while now. At the same time Google's robots (i.e. the crawler programs that index web pages) have been extremely active, leading many to believe that a major change is imminent.

Why would Google do that? For several reasons.

One is to keep webmasters on their toes.

Not that Google does not accept that site owners do their best to achieve good search engine rankings, they do. They hate spam, though -- i.e. optimization techniques that lead to the rise of low quality web pages to the top of the stack. By changing the algorithm, Google ruins the effects of these techniques, forcing the spammers to start all over again.

It could also be that Google's aggressive indexing is to lay the foundation for a much larger search index.

What Google cannot risk is a new index or new algorithm that reduces the quality of search results for the regular searcher, thus tempting users to try alternative services like Yahoo! and AskJeeves. This leads us to believe that they will be very careful to test results this time, before launching a new version.

Webmasters should keep in mind that Google does not own them anything. You should never let your livelihood depend on a good ranking in Google alone.

The best strategy for most of us is to stay away for spam, and deliver a lot of content rich pages that attracts inbound links. Some of them might fall during a new "Florida" storm, while others might rise.

And if all fails (and you can afford it): develop a pay-per-click text ad strategy.

The buzz: Webmaster World, Cre8asite,

If you want to learn more about "legal" search engine optimization techniques, visit our search engine optimization tutorial.

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