Following the Google SEO update on February 5, things have been going nuts. Some sites have been blowing up; other sites have been shedding keywords like crazy. I’ve done over 10 hours of research on this topic. Here are some notes.
Here is the Update
Here on Algoroo we see the update plainly. It was the biggest update since the Penguin Double-Take update on December 6th.
What Did it Effect
Based on research, we have seen that this update mainly influenced rankings for ecommerce websites. The update had a major impact on <brand> <category> terms. However, it also impacted normal category terms. Here we see an example websites that lost rankings.
Here is one that gained.
Who Won from This Update
This update seems to have turned up the dial for big brands. Amazon and Twitter in particular have gained ranking positions for a great deal of terms.
Amazon – Gained 20,473 keywords on the first two pages of Google
Twitter – Gain 380,735 keywords on the first two pages of Google.
Is the Update Coming to An End
Over the last 4 days we saw major fluctuations in the serps. Some sites that had been on a downward trend following the February 5th update saw their first reversal. Here we big changes in MozCast.
What to Do
As far as I can tell, this was a domain authority update. The big sites started getting more keywords and the little sites lost. It does seem like Google is still playing with the controls. Watch and wait is a good strategy for the moment.
