The Summer of Google: Killing Spam, Updating Penguin
Matt Cutts, Google’s chief of web spam, is back with a new video, this time answering the question of what types of SEO changes to expect from Google over the summer.
Cutts was forthcoming, of course without giving the fine details, and outlines about 10 changes that he expects to have a single cumulative effect: bringing up the ranking of good, valuable sites and lowering the ranking of spam sites and junk. Will the changes help? Probably. Will plenty of web masters and SEO specialists be upset and confused along the way? Even more likely.
Big Penguin Update Coming
Perhaps the biggest change coming to Google is the rollout of Penguin 2.0, as it’s being referred to by Google’s internal teams. You may have previously seen headlines advertising the launch of Penguin 2 and Penguin 3, but Cutts is now saying that those updates were more like Penguin 1.1 and Penguin 1.2. Expect the official Penguin 2.0 to affect many more queries than those minor updates, and keep in mind that we still don’t know exactly what Penguin 2.0 will entail in terms of SEO.
What else is coming to Google in the coming months? Cutts went over many points, and here are some highlights:
- Google’s spam team will take a closer look at queries that are thought to be spammy in general, killing spam that is generated from sites such as those dealing with pornography, cash advance loans and sexual enhancement supplements.
- Google will take further steps to crack down on “advertorial” content.
- Improving communication with site owners and web developers.
- Reducing the impact of the Panda update and making it more fair to site owners.
- Giving a big boost to sites that are considered an “authority” within their community or industry.
- Implementing features that will allow them to more quickly detect when a site has been hacked.
- Greatly improving link analysis.
…and that’s not even everything Cutts mentioned, so it should be a hot, busy summer for the search teams at Google. For more detail, it’s worth watching the full 7-minute video: