On November 15th Webtrade noticed major changes within many of our clients’ sites and their ranking within Google. It quickly became apparent that Google was ‘Dancing’.

A Google Dance occurs periodically when Google needs to adjust its index of sites. It may also signal a tweaking of the algorithm that determines the rankings across its worldwide Data centers. This results in rankings going up and down quicker than recent media commentators budget expectations.

Google Dances are regularly named in a manner similar to hurricanes, and this particular dance has been dubbed ‘Florida’.

While most users of Google will not notice any great cataclysmic changes to the service they are receiving from Google, it means weeks of sleepless nights for every Search Engine Optimisation company – dubbed ‘Google Dance Syndrome’. And the consensus is that the dance is not over yet.

Webtrade has monitored the changes that have impacted on our clients closely over the last couple of weeks. To date there is no hard evidence of what the major implications of the Google dance will mean to the methods applied to optimise sites for Google. Theories, and indeed conspiracy theories are rampant. Some search results being delivered by Google at the moment are clearly not relevant to the search, or are delivering ‘cloaked’ pages or pages that have utilized ‘link farms’.

Our advise to clients? Don’t panic, keep implementing best practice optimisation techniques, don’t spam search engines with blatant optimisation, don’t cloak, don’t waste resources on link farms. Ensure that each page on your site has correct and relevant meta tags and has great copy, optimised for Search Engines and compelling to your audience. Check back here for updates.

For more information on the Florida Update, or to get your Free Visibility Report contact the Online Marketing team in Webtrade at online@webtrade.ie