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 know, I know. It’s easy for me to say “duh” because I’m not affected by this drastic change in Google PageRanks that’s happening now across the web. My sites, after all, have always had PageRanks of 4 (but so are the rest of you now! Bwahaha! Kidding.) Admittedly, it had been a little disappointing at first — considering all the link building I’ve done for these sites, I reckon I should have at least moved a step up in that PageRank ladder already. Heh.

But it’s not like I’m having sleepless nights over it. I stopped caring about PageRanks long ago, after all, I’ve seen websites with PRs as little as 2 and 3, ranking in the SERPs along with sites that have greater PageRanks. I just don’t think that PageRank is still a valid measure of a site’s relevance anymore, is all.

Andy Beard made an inventory of sites/blogs that were affected by the update downgrade. And so did Barry Schwarts at Search Engine Land. It would be interesting to find out if the traffic of these sites were really affected by this whole PR update thing. I think not.

Hence, I make an anti-thesis to Jayvee’s “Blog Networks should NOT rely on Text Link Ads or Google AdSense” idea. (Hi, Jayvs! Hehe.) Yes, Google is not a big fan of selling and buying links, we all know that already. Then again, it has been pointed out several times that a lot of those blogs that were affected are not involved with selling (or buying) links. I don’t think this has got anything to do with Google Adsense, either. Perhaps, the theory should be something in the line of “stop relying on Google PageRanks, people.” Google must have been fed up already by sites that are relying too much on its PR technology to market their own businesses.

Didn’t Aaron Wall state long before this controversial PR update that “PageRank is the wonkiest stat of them all“? Prior to this, we all know that Google updates PageRanks every after three months (longer sometimes), hence, the PageRanks we’ve all been seeing are, in a sense, outdated. Also, PageRanks vary across data centers, and across Google toolbars even. And again, I’ve seen a lot of sites that do not have PR5s or PR6s ranking for competitive keywords all the time.

My thesis: Websites should NOT rely on Google PageRanks.

Blog Networks should no longer use PageRanks as their “bait” or marketing pitch to advertisers. Text Links Ads or Blog to Profit shouldn’t make it their standard for approving sign-ups, either. Point is, there are far better and more reliable ways to measure a site’s relevance, like, traffic for example. Or content. Or backlinks. PageRank is soooo 2005.

Good for me, while blogging this I found myself at Search Engine Journal (whose PR, by the way, dropped from 7 to 4). So hey, I’d stop ranting now so I can direct you over to Loren Baker’s take on this. Take it over, Mr. Baker. I agree with everything you say.

So should the rest of us.

One of the things I realized as I prepare for my talk on Advanced Link Building Techniques at the much-awaited SEMCON 2007 is that, the “advanced” part of it is pretty basic. True enough, the more you dig into what you thought was a complicated topic, the more you realize how simple it is. Apparently, this idea applies to link building too.

Link building is not like a complicated chemical solution that would explode if you didn’t follow a certain step-by-step procedure. Yes, some techniques may be detrimental to your search engine rankings, and could either pull your sites up or down drastically. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try and test ways to build your link network and see which ones will work for you.

Also, the one thing I like about it is, you can put your personality into your link building strategy, couple it with some standard techniques, and the right combinations could easily make your project flourish before your eyes. And while there are gazillion ways of doing link building, in the long run, it all boils down to the basics.

Let me tell you more about that on October 9. SEMCON Philippines 2007.

And let me just add that there is such a thing as Pink SEO. Yup. ;)

More at SEMCON 2007. Be there.

P.S. Trust me, don’t believe everything she says. You see, she’s a very good friend of mine. LOL.