Warning: "You do NOT want the next penguin update"

[mikeb]

Much more than a data refresh:
When Matt Cutts says that it has got to be bad...and it is coming. Soon.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-p...ing-15577.html

Interesting article.

[Clinton]

It's got to be bad ...for whom?

Unless he means that the whole first page of SERPs is now going to promote only Google owned properties.

[mikeb]

It's got to be bad ...for whom?

Unless he means that the whole first page of SERPs is now going to promote only Google owned properties.

Turmoil is bad.
Objectively so - handing traffic from one set of sites to a different set of sites on a whim with massive step changes. Another set of fledgling businesses going out of business, no doubt.

[cash ninja]

This just strikes me as sabre rattling by Google. Whatever happened to their motto 'do no evil'? That has certainly long gone out of the window. The say power corrupts. Google's success as a search engine was based on the fact that they were able to deliver much more relevant results than the other search engines of the time. However, if they are now talking about making changes as drastic as they are threatening here then they are either admitting that they think the results they are delivering aren't relevant, not only that but that they are drastically wrong, or that they should be the ultimate arbiters of what is relevant on the web. Maybe a bit of both.

It strikes me that they are making more and more commercially influenced decisions on what their serps should be. Sure, Google is a business and the results they deliver are ultimately their results but I wonder how much more trouble they are likely to run into for anti-competitive behaviour if they carry on tinkering like this?

[Slowdive]

I welcome it, as much as I can ever welcome a google update. Penguin and Panda updates left the web with a lot of creative problem solving to do. The webmasters who took the hint and begun to make adjustments are still on occasion being shafted by spam sites, old techniques still working and other SERP oddities.
If this lets google further lock algo changes in and to my knowledge I am now creating pages, SEOing and link generating in alignment with the updates goals, then I am likely to stand to profit.

Its actually becoming painfully simple to Google proof a site these days, we all had a choice to make after the last update do it G's way or go it alone. Some of my sites that I choose not to amend to fit googles plans may sink and some that I have been adopting current best practice with, should flourish.