Anybody who monitors their rankings with an equivalent vigor that we tend to within the SEO community do can have noticed some fairly dramatic shifts within the algorithm beginning last Thursday (July 5th) and continuing through the weekend. Several sites are rocketing into the highest ten that, of course, means several sites are being dropped at an equivalent time. We tend to were lucky to not have any shoppers on the losing finish of that equation but we’ve got known as and emailed the shoppers who saw sudden jumps into the highest positions to warn them that any changes are coming back. When a weekend of study there are some curiosities within the results that merely need any tweaks within the ranking system.

Domain Age

It appears that Google is currently giving a lot of weight to the age of a domain and, in this SEO’s view, strangely so. While the age of a domain can absolutely be used as a factor in formative how solid a company or site is, there are many newer sites that provide some great information and pioneering ideas. Unfortunately a lot of these sites got spanked in the last update.

On this tangent I have to say that Google’s use of domain age as a whole is a good filter, allowing them to "sandbox" sites on day one to insure that they aren’t just being launched to rank quickly for terms. Recalling back to the "wild west days" of SEO when ranking a site was a matter of cramming keywords into content and using questionable methods to generate links speedily I can sincerely say that adding in this delay was an outstanding step that insured that the benefits of pumping out domains became extremely limited. So I endorse of domain age being used to value a site – to a point.

After a period of time (let’s call it a year shall we) the age should and generally has only had a very small power on a site’s ranking with the myriad of other factors overshadowing the site’s whois data. This appear to have changed in the recent update with age investment a disproportionate weight. In a number of instances this has resulted in older, less eligible domains to rank higher than newer sites of higher quality.

This change in the ranking algorithm wills the majority be adjusted as Google works to maximize the searchers experience. We’ll get into the "when" question below.

Backlinks

The way that backlinks are being calculated and esteemed has seen some adjustments in the newest update as well. The way this has been done takes me back a couple years to the more easily gamed Google of old. This announcement alone reinforces the fact that adjustments are necessary.

The way backlinks are being esteemed appears to have lost some grasp on relevancy and placed more importance on sheer numbers. Sites with large, unfocused reciprocal link directories are outranking sites with fewer but more relevant link. Non-reciprocal links lost the "advantages" that they held over reciprocal links until recently.

Fundamentally the environment is currently such that Google has made itself more easily gamed than it was a week ago. In the present environment, building a realistic sized site with a large recip link directory (even unfocused) should be enough to get you ranking. For obvious reasons this cannot (and should not) stand indefinitely.

PageRank

On the optimistic side of the equation, PageRank appear to have lost some of it’s significance including the importance of PageRank as it pertains to the value of a backlinks. In my opinion this is a very positive step on Google’s part and shows a solid considerate of the fact that PageRank means little in terms of a site’s importance. That said, while PageRank is a less than wonderful calculation subject to much abuse and action from those pesky people in the SEO community it did serve a purpose and while it needed to be replaced it doesn’t appear to have been replaced with anything of substantial value.

A reasonably common belief has been that PageRank would be or is being replace by TrustRank and Google would not give us a green bar to gague a site’s trust on (good call Google). With this in mind one of two things has happened; either Google has determined the TrustRank is irrelevant and so is PageRank and decided to scrap both (unlikely) or they have shifted the weight from PageRank to TrustRank to some degree and are just now sorting out the issues with their TrustRank calculations (more likely). Issues that may have existed with TrustRank may not have been clear due to it’s weight in the overall algorithm and with this shift reducing the significance of PageRank the issues that face the TrustRank calculations may well be attractive more evident

In truth, the question is neither here nor there (as important a question as it may be). We will cover why this is in the…

My Opinion and Conclusion

So what does all of this mean? First, it means that this Thursday or Friday we can be expecting yet another update to correct some of the issues we’ve seen rise out of the most existing round. This shouldn’t surprise anyone too much; we’ve been seeing normal updates out of Google quite a bit over the past few months.

But what does this mean regarding the aging of domains? While I truly feel that an aging delay or "sandbox" is a solid filter on Google’s part – it needs to have a maximum duration. A site from 2000 is not, by default, more appropriate than a site from 2004. After a year-or-so the trust of a domain should hold steady or at most, hold a extremely slight weight. This is an area we are very likely to see changes in the next update.

As far as backlinks go, we’ll see changes in the way they are calculated unless Google is looking to revert back to the issues they had in 2003. Lower PageRank, high relevancy links will once again surpass high amount, less relevant links. Google is getting tremendously good and determining relevancy and so I think the current algorithm issues has more to do with the weight assigned to different factors than an inability to properly calculate a links relevancy.

And in regards to PageRank, Google will likely shift back slightly to what worked and give more importance to PageRank, at least while they figure out what went awry here.

In short, I would anticipate that with an update late this week or over the weekend we’re going to see a shift back to last week’s results (or something very close to it) after which they’ll work on the issues they’ve experienced and launch a new (hopefully improved) algorithm shift the following weekend. And so, if you’ve enjoy a sudden jump from page 6 to top 3, don’t pop the cork on the Champaign too speedily and if you’ve noticed some drops, don’t panic. More adjustment to this algorithm are necessary and, if you’ve used solid SEO practices and been consistent and varied in your link building tactics – keep at it and your rankings will return.

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