Similar to that morning Starbucks hit that so many of us coffee addicts have come to crave, this latest ‘caffeine-fix’ will leave you feeling like you’ve just drunk several litres of the stuff: jittery, irritable and definitely suffering from heart palpitations. Okay, maybe not heart palpitations at first but there is certainly cause for some anxiety for those who’ve been coasting by on earnings from their older sites.
That’s right, Google has decided to update its search engine by getting – well, up to date. The merit behind this is that when people are searching for the latest Christmas gifts for their kids, they don’t want to see an outdated yo-yo collection from 2005 (even if the site owner has spent lots of money building links). Instead, Google will look at when a site’s content has been updated and rank it higher, according to how recent and relevant it is. Gives a nice little edge as to how they plan to handle “latest bonuses,” eh? Just kidding!
However, there is one great thing coming out of this update – Social Media is finally becoming Google’s new favorite. Caffeine 2.0 is now able to recognise Javascript coding, which means those old Facebook comments, Blog annotations and Tweets that you made about your site are suddenly going to become a whole lot more valuable.
But remember that when it comes to Google, not everything is as plain and independent as we’d like it to be. In fact it seems that their latest Google+ project (you know – the one that’s been failing so spectacularly) is now, coincidentally, getting a boost. Google is hoping to give a new lease of life to what was arguably one of their weakest launches to date, by providing you with the ability to create business pages, fan pages and rank your comments and blog posts. A smart move when you think about it.
So what do we have to learn from this update? Well, if you were already following the rules … not that much.
- Regularly update all your content, especially Blogs and News, as it is going to be highly valuable from now.
- Keep an eye on your bounce rate and site popularity – this is going to be important when you want to keep ranking for your chosen words.
- And lastly, expect the latest surge of black-hat spammers to go wild for the first few months, as every person with a previously obsolete auto-spammer who stopped using it last year, is now going to start all over again on social media sites.
Sorry, but those of you who expected a perfect update for once – even with Version 2 – should really know Google a bit better by now!
About the Author
Daniel Laming spent over two years working as an affiliate manager for GTech and Red Interactive, but recently decided to pursue a role as a full-time affiliate working on website BigPainsNoGains with a team of five, focusing on Online Casino and Online Bingo offers.