Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

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The search regime is changing, and with it SEO

For those that remember the days, pre-Google, ranking in search was actually all about content (those were the days), but the landscape changed enormously when links came into the equation. The point I am making is I suspect the impending leap to the next "search algorithm" will be as significant as that from Alta Vista to Google all those years ago.

Since Google revolutionised search results, we the SEO community have been playing cat and mouse trying to stay one step ahead, but most of this has been within the confines of now very familiar practices. But here we stand on the edge of an abyss; SEO is reaching a turning point.

To demonstrate this, in the past if a member of the Google team stood up at a conference, the warnings were there about reciprocal links, over optimisation of content, keyword stuffing, link farms, site wides and paid links. The point here is that the Google team would warn about these tactics long before they could build an antidote. Quite often the sabre rattling would go on for years before an actual penalty would ensue as a result of them.

So where are we now? It was notable at a recent conference, SMX Advance, that Google's head spam cop, Matt Cutts, spent virtually no time warning of what not to do. This can mean one of two things, that Google has;

1) cracked the last bastion of link spam, or

2) that it doesn't care anymore, because its focus is elsewhere.

To confuse the situation further, all this unfortunately all co-insides with the recent acclaimed Mayday Update and Google's Caffeine launch. What has become more obvious is that sites with good information architecture, and are considered "social", are beginning to rank better.

The whole situation is very fluid, and the search results we are seeing now may only be a transitional stage, but there is a point to be made. As with the leap from content based to link based search engines, we may now be witnessing another internet search evolution.

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