Today it appears as though what’s known as a ‘minor algorithm update‘ has been passed through from Google.
The main reason the 10 December Google update is obviously is a shift in rankings which is not normally noticed from day to day SEO efforts. In other words, whilst on-going SEO can tweak results slightly, it’s rare to discover that large numbers of websites have moved more than a few places in the search engine results (overnight).
An example is when you are closely monitoring a set of important phrases for a client, and find one morning that the main 10 competitors have shifted about in the results. Perhaps the top 2 ranked websites shifting to the top of the second page and the others like a shuffled pack of cards taking up the top positions.
Although there is no news on the December 10th update from Google, expect some reaction during the following few days.
On the subject of the Google Algorithm updates, The Register recently revealed a copy of what is believed to be ‘Google SEO Handbook’. Despite many optimisers and industry experts being convinced of the robotic nature of Google’s algorithms, there appears to be a network of around 1,500 manual workers who are employed from home to help aid the Google Web-spam team.
Robots cannot of course determine every time whether content has been created to provide a better user experience or manipulate the search results.
