As we dig deeper into the changes John discussed in the previous post, we are seeing them appear randomly as does happen when a roll-out is coming or being tested.

Several issues to ponder and analyze:

First, why the change? Google’s goal is to produce useful results, and by making this change, google is assuming that that when a user searches the term “laptops”, they should see a list of the manufacturers of these items, the largest companies.  It could be that Apple and Dell and HP were not optimizing their sites according to Google’s complex rules, maybe suffering from duplicate content issues or a plethora of other issues that keeping them from ranking higher. So Google is giving them an artificial boost because they decided they should show up in the top 10? On one hand, this is logical, as I debate with John that the masses do expect to see Yellow Page type results, with the most popular well known companies up top. However several manufacturers are not making an appearance, where is Sony and Lenovo?

But why is Google assuming that a search for a generic term is a search for the large producers of that item, not sellers or researchers or reviewers.  When someone searches for laptops, they very well may want the manufacturers, or they may be shopping, or they may be trying to learn about laptops. With a broad term, could be anything, and if they do not see the results they want, they will get more specific on subsequent searches. For this reason, the broadest term, laptops, should still be a mix of the most relevant sites, from sellers to reviewers to government pages, encouraging the user to employ a more specific term.

More importantly, how is this being done? Is it manual or algorithmic? Which weighting factor changed to show these dramatic result changes? We have a couple theories. Although there is some buzz about site traffic factoring in to the algo, this is most likely a longshot as it is a self fulfilling prophecy, as higher ranked sites get more traffic. It is possible that Google is devaluing the anchor text of inbound links.

And even more importantly, how would this change the face of search? Although initially there would be an uproar and traffic issue from sites previously in the top 10, like the laptop sellers above who are now on page 2, a searcher that is actually shopping for a laptop in theory should perform a 2nd more specific search. However the problem is that Apple and Dell are also retailers of their own product, so this artificial manipulation shows favoritism in a way.  Google has now determined that Dell is a more important result for a laptop shopper than a site that sells many other brands, possibly for less.  A shopper sees only the manufacturers of the item, and does not see the plethora of very large laptop sellers.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out, if it will be vertical specific, if users will be happy or unhappy with this change, and how SEOs will adapt.

Tags: google serp changes

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