It is now almost four weeks since Google engineers applied the filter that has become known as the Florida Update. It has been a busy month for the SEO community and a very difficult month for businesses dependant on strong Google listings. It has also been an extremely good month for one of Google's main rivals, Yahoo! While there has not been a noticeable change in the Google listings, we have seen some limited movement at Google. Please note, this is only observation and limited analysis. Nobody in the SEO world can claim to really understand what is happening at Google until after the next major Google-Dance. What we can do is relay information and our observations as they come along and that is what is intended in this article.

For the past 24 days, the SEO community has been trying to analyze the Florida Update and make sense of what is happening at the Mountain View GooglePlex. We have read and heard opinions ranging from the profit motive, (forcing online retailers to sign up with AdWords), to the conspiratorial, (Google trying to delete SEO fueled campaigns). Our view continues to favour good intentions from Google as they have championed clean search results for years but, in light of the way Google has treated webmasters and SEO companies who followed Google's guidelines, our faith in Google's best practices is quickly waning. To quickly reiterate, we believe that Google is trying to weed out sites that abused SEO techniques such as massive link-building campaigns and keyword enriching titles and anchor text. Google cast a net that was far too wide and caught a lot of completely innocent webmasters involved in business sectors that attract extremely aggressive marketers. In this case, it appears to be entire sectors being punished for the sins of a few.

Some sectors that were hit particularly hard include, real estate sites, travel and tourism sites, and, ironically, search engine placement sites. Along with the millions of others affected by the Florida Update, we saw our own listing slip from the #6 position on Google to somewhere below the #1000 position. We have since noticed our site bounce back to the #48 and #50 position on Google, where it currently sits. Recently, we've noted a major increase in Google spider activity and a good deal of "bounce" for listings across Google's various datacenters. We believe another Google-Dance is on right now and that the engineers at the GooglePlex are working to restore some sense of relevance to the listings. We have seen many sites that were injured by the Florida Update bounce back up and vanish again, often within the same 24-hour period. Clearly something is happening in the background that is at times flushing over into the foreground. Again, this is evidence that Google is trying to fix a broken tool. Right about now, Google needs to fix their popular tool. Search engine users are looking for other information sources and Google may see a decline in webmasters using its services if those users and webmasters do not have faith in Google's ranking technology. As stated before, Google's update hit folks who were playing by the rules. This is likely the first time the phrase "collateral damage" can be used in a truly honest and meaningful way. As a measure of the impact of Florida Update, the SCROOGLE website from Daniel Brant (of GoogleWatch.Com fame) has placed #7 on Alexa’s Movers & Shaker’s list. I think this indicates how deeply people need to know what’s happening on Google. Scroogle had a user increase of 710% over the past 7-days.

Many, if not most of the sites affected by the Florida Update meet the guidelines mentioned above. About fourteen months ago, Google announced it would begin a massive Spam deletion campaign, a factor leading to last year's October update. At that time, Google re-published its SEO guidelines, thus forcing a number of SEO firms, including StepForth to re-tool our promotion techniques to meet the new "rules" as spelled out by Google. When the world's largest search engine said it will take action against websites if they deviate from simple, written rules, SEO firms sat up and listened. The problem for us is, we and our clients changed to suit Google's rules but Google itself has not. Currently, the Top10 under almost any keyword phrase is bound to bring up some spam and several irrelevant results. We do not believe this would have happened if Google had enforced the rules it asked SEOs to follow.

Meanwhile, down the road in Sunnyvale California, Google's #1 rival, Yahoo! is reaping the benefits of the early Christmas gift Google has given them. Yahoo!, owner of (Overture, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb, and Inktomi), has recently surpassed Google as the world's most popular website, according to Alexa's popular monitoring service. With searchers starting to look for information at other search tools, Yahoo! appears to be a clear winner. Ironically, Yahoo! continues to draw much of its listings from Google but industry rumour has Yahoo! switching fully to Inktomi early in the new year. Yahoo!'s stable of search tools, patents and technologies, and Overture's Content Match contextual distribution system, make Yahoo! an attractive option to Google.

As for businesses depending on Google, we are deeply concerned about the effect this update will have on their bottom lines, especially as Christmas sales are so important. Google will never be able to bring back lost time and it is doubtful that anything Google does at this point will help salvage the season for online retailers. Our best advise for them can be found in Scott Van Achte's Weekly Quick Tip article below.