In the past month, Google has pushed out a softer Panda update, quietly updated their link schemes guidelines and issued warnings to manipulative browser actions.
With that, a lot of SEOs became worried about press releases and article marketing - especially with "optimized keyword rich anchor text" in them. The jury is still in on how this will play out, but a typical slow summer was not that slow.
The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread had a bit more chatter earlier around August 1st and 2nd but the weekend was pretty quiet in terms of that chatter. Meaning, not much ranking changes over the weekend.
For last' month's recap, see the July report. Here is the monthly recap as we saw it:
Google Updates:
- Confirmed: Google Panda Update: The "Softer" Panda Algorithm
- Was There A Weekend Google Update?
- Google May Be Updating Search Algorithm
- Google Updates Link Schemes Examples With Mentions Of Guest Posting, Advertorials & Press Releases
- Google: Links In Press Releases Are Unnatural Links & Should Be Nofollowed
- Google To Penalize Sites Manipulating Browser Back Button & Faking Search Results
- What SEOs Are Focusing On With Enge's Interview With Google's Matt Cutts
- Can You Redirect A Google Penalty? Probably.
- Google's Cutts: Be Careful Linking Many Sites Together
- Google's Matt Cutts On Using ccTLDs
- Google's Matt Cutts: You Can Hide Content Only When...
- Google's Cutts Says Don't Worry About Duplicate Content But SEOs Don't Trust
- Google's Matt Cutts On What If My Site Goes Down? Are My Rankings Doomed?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
