Content Remains King With Google's May Day
14 June 2010
Sean Michael Kerner of InternetNews.com reports that Google’s 'May Day' search engine update is affecting website rankings significantly. He reported from a packed conference held in Toronto this week called 'Search Engine Strategies'.
Google’s new Caffeine web indexing system has been very much in the news, but May Day went into effect prior to Caffeine, beginning on the 28th of April, with less public notice. For many small websites, May Day may be having a bigger impact on rankings than Caffeine.
May Day was the first in a series of strategies to improve the relevancy of Google’s search algorithm. Ranking updates now happen more quickly and more metadata can be attached to search results.
The main focus of the May Day update was to better accommodate searches done on long strings of keywords, called 'long-tail' queries. In her keynote address, Google senior engineer Maile Ohye said:
"Some people weren't developing quality content on long search terms. It wasn't a violation of our guidelines, but it wasn't what we wanted. So for long-tail queries, we now just consider them as all other queries and place as much value on them as we do into shorter queries."
Ohye also said that while social media links can improve search engine rankings and add to a site’s promotional power, the best route to higher ranking is to fine-tune your website and focus on quality features. Website developers who have lost rankings due to the updates may need to re-prioritize site features. Ohye concluded with, In a nutshell, content is king.
