In 2010, we’ve seen a lot of changes in the google search algorithm. Most mainstream SEO strategies and conventional approaches to search engine optimization has been rendered ineffective and obsolete. We’ve seen a lot of top websites plunged into the deep and lost a lot of search engine positions. This could mean doomsday for the mediocare SEO practitioner, but for the highly experienced SEO professionals, this could mean an oasis of opportunity. The key is analysis and adaptation. Let’s summarize the updates that occurred in the google search algorithm:

Dec 7, 2009 - Real time search results feature has been incorporated into the google SERP.  Updates from popular sites that occurred seconds ago can already be seen in the SERP.

Jan 22, 2010 - Answer highlighting in search results. A minor update that does not affect much the ranking algorithm but smart SEO practitioners find this update very useful.

April 2010 - Google introduced “Places”. Place page is originally a part of google map which was rolled out in Sept of 2009.

May 2010 - The May Day update – an algorithm change that highly impacted “long-tailed” search.

June 2010 - The “Caffeine” update was rolled out which speeded up how google crawl and index websites.

September 2010 - Google instant. The update which made it possible for google to display the results as the search query is being typed.

November 2010 - Google instant preview – allows the preview of the landing page directly from the search results page.

December 2010 - Social signals – google announced they are working on integrating “social signals” from facebook, twitter and other social media on it’s ranking algorithm

January 28, 2011 - Attribution Update. Google rolled out an algorithm update targeting web-scraping in response to high profile spam attacks.

February 23, 2011 - Farmer/Panda update – a major ranking algorithm update targeting content spamming. Hit a lot of low quality article publishing websites.

March 30, 2011 - Google +1. – the first step to incorporating “human” factor in the ranking algorithm.

April 11, 2011 - Panda Update 2.0 – finished rolling out the panda update to all English search queries worldwide.

May 9, 2011 - Panda Update 2.1 – minor change in the panda update.

June 21, 2011 - Panda Update 2.2

June 28, 2011 - Introduced Google + – social media designed to compete with twitter and facebook. Another step in integrating “human” factor in the ranking algorithm.

Every genuine SEO Professional hate spam, may it be link spam, content spam or article/forum spam. Fake seo’s and web-marketers have been tarnishing the reputation of honest, hardworking and real SEO Experts for years. They have degraded the profession that I am so proud of. Because of this, prospective clients who were less informed sometimes equate SEO with link-spam – the notion that I am really so disappointed to hear. We, as SEO Consultants are supposed to work with google and other search engines to ensure that only the properly optimized, high quality and most relevant websites are presented in the search results.

One of the current problems with regards to SEO Spam is “Content Farming”. This is the current method that fake seo’s and web-marketers use in conducting “fake off-site SEO”. They basically write large numbers of low quality articles, blog and forum posts hoping to influence the search results. It is sad to say that these methods sometimes work. Luckily for us, it will surely be a thing of the past. The google guys were able to develop a smart algorithm to counter the effects of content farming (in January, they promised to take action against fake seo’s, web-marketers and content farmers). Google has just launched the “Farmer” algorithm update – a massive change to it’s ranking algorithm.

The “Farmer” algorithm was specifically designed to combat the effects of content farming. The update has now hit not only the US results but also the UK and other countries as well. Some of the sites that content farmers usually post their spam has already lost a lot of it’s search engine exposure. Hubpages has lost 85.72% of their visibility in google. Squidoo lost 35.89%, ezinearticles.com lost 93.69%, associatedcontent.com lost 94.93%, articlesbase.com lost 88.68%, and hundreds more.

Here are some of the top websites that lost a lot of SE visibility: