After several sleepness nights of trying to understand the big algorithm change, I realized that we may have been running around in circles, flooding the webmasterworld forums with questions, when all along, the answer may be just right under our noses.

A quick summary of the so-called Dewey update (for the sake of those non-SEOs who find themselves on this site because they’re searching for a pink gadget or something, blpht) :

• Drastic Google SERP movements were noticed starting late February to early March.
• Rankings and indexed pages across data centers have been fluctuating.
• Various affected sites dropped their rankings (from 1st page to 6th page)
• Some have got their traffic and ranking back, some haven’t.
• While Matt Cutts asked for feedback and offered to answer inquiries, there was not a word of confirmation or denial that the was indeed an algo update.
• Forums are endless, until now.

Turns out, this whole thing may simply be a case of penalizing bad linking patterns. The case study in Google Webmaster Help Forum (which started Feb 22) showed the same symptoms — all rankings dropped to about 6 pages down, causing traffic and revenue drop. Apparently, the diagnosis for that one particular case study — and let me just say it helped a lot that Matt Cutts came out to give his two cents — revolved mostly around the bad network of paid links, reciprocal links, and links from non-related sites (in this case, porn sites).

To make the long story short (lesson learned, definitely), Google may be simply improving their way of detecting bad linking patterns (not like we’re not aware of that little detail.) Hence, the tactics that used to work for you may not work anymore. So if you’ve been hit by what you thought was a “mean” algorithm update, then you may be doing something wrong — consciously or unconsciously. Are you buying links perhaps? Or relying too much on similar sources for links? Or sponsoring Wordpress themes?

Time to clean up those link profiles. And don’t you wait to be penalized before doing something. Prevention is, after all, still always better than cure.

As for “Dewey”, I think we better put that keyword to rest for now, before innocent people start reading about a Google algorithm change when they’re looking for dewey decimal systems.

I am Giovanna Wall’s only twitter friend, aside from her husband, Aaron Wall.

Now if only Gio would update more.. Ehem.

The other day, my boyfriend told me how he bragged to his colleagues that his girlfriend is working at Google. (Cute, I know right, LOL.) I let him finish talking before telling him for the nth time that I don’t work at Google.

But I guess I can’t blame him. Before me, Search Engine Marketing was a foreign concept to him. Apparently, to his colleagues too, who were easily impressed, albeit unaware that it’s impossible for someone who’s in the Philippines to be working at Google. I mean, unless you’re Aileen Apolo, that is.

But yeeah, I know that’s the easiest way to explain things right? When you’re doing Search Engine Marketing, you’re basically kissing Google’s ass. And most people would probably understand the term “Google” more than they would recognize what a “search engine” is. Here’s me talking to my uncle from California who visited Manila last month:

Uncle George: So, Riz.. do you work in a call center?
Riz: Nope. I’m doing Search Engine Marketing.
Uncle George: *puzzled look* Uhm, what’s a search engine..?
Riz: Uhm, Google, Tito.
Uncle George: Ohhh, Google!
Riz: Yep.
Uncle George: You work at Google?
Riz: *give up*

Undeniably, one of the the most challenging things about this job is how you explain it to people who dare ask.

But that’s not the point of this post. The point is, Google, in its relatively few years of existence, has managed to define the concept of Search Engine Marketing.

Graph from Search Engine Land.

With a whopping 64% share of all internet “searchers” in 2007, Google’s, no doubt, one of the major reasons why there were rumors about a Microsoft-Yahoo merger, and the news-breaking Yahoo layoff, and the slow death of all the other struggling search engines in the web. And then there’s Ask.com’s announcement that they, too, like Yahoo, would be laying 40 people off their payroll and adopting a new strategy starting this year.

Hands down. It’s beyond comprehension how Google dominates this particular area of internet marketing life. Sometimes to the point of being.. tragic.