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This month, WebmasterWorld members have observed the same old shuffle in rankings that plagued webmasters in our April 2008 Google SERP Update post.
A lot of rankings are dropping, and one webmaster even reports that he's hit a new traffic low in 2008.
One member likens these drops to the fact that Google might want to emphasize their paid listings.
Looks to me that at this stage of the game where Google completely dominates the market it would be beneficial for them to have "inconsistent"/"moving" results in the natural search so people would click on the ads as those are consistent. When searchers will get the idea that they will not get the same (even though still relevant) result every time they search, they will most certainly pay more attention to the ads. Google getting richer?
That's definitely an interesting statement.
Other observations include blogs being ranked higher, link exchange websites taking a hit in the rankings, issues with relevant rankings (specifically, more relevant internal pages are now being replaced by the less-relevant home pages for search phrases), and a lot of dropped rankings.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Matt
05/05/2008 05:28 pm
In response to the quote above, I think that would be a horrible idea for Google. One of the reasons Google is so successful is because they avoid deceptive tactics, and focus on helping people find what they want.
No Name
05/21/2008 03:50 pm
Yes the results are really messed up, I have been tracking them at http://www.altek.ca/blog/changes-in-serps/ and we went from ranking #1/2 and are being shuffled around, even though we have more natural links & more content than all other sites and we don't have any bad outgoing links and such. So far everyone I have talked to does not like the changes, perfect example would be for the term "cell phone wallpapers" or even "free cell phone wallpapers" www.cell-phone-wallpapers.com (owned by freemobilefun.net which ranks #1, and the owner also owns mytinyphone.com which is ranked #7th) outranks the original www.cellphone-wallpapers.net (free) while the first is a full ad-sponsored site. With flycell (commercial) and jamster (commercial) also being pushed to the top, just one of the examples of how crazy & useless some of these results are. Any thoughts Matt Cutts?
No Name
05/22/2008 01:42 pm
My web sites and blogs too are continuously shuffled up and downs since one month. I hope this update will end quite soon.