Phantom Of The Google Update

Imagine the horror of closing up the office as usual, and upon your return the next morning you are hit with the news that 22% of your web traffic has disappeared.

Unfortunately,  this was the news that Paul Edmondson was faced with, the founder and CEO of a San Francisco-based company that produces thousands of ‘mini-blogs’.

HubPages was one of many sites and businesses that noticed a surprising shift in traffic originating from Google. However, post-mobilegeddon ripples were not thought to be the reason behind these dramatic, unaccounted-for losses. In fact,  critics and webmasters alike are dubbing this as the ‘Phantom update’, as Google are declining any comment.

Since the industries that have been affected are reaching far and wide, it would appear that the update is to Google’s core algorithm; potentially pressing even more emphasis onto the quality of the content, rather than the quantity, offering users a more informative and relevant search result.

The Panda update that landed in 2011 ranked sites on their quality and relevance, and the following year saw the Penguin update take action against those abusing links. The Penguin update forced businesses to fall off the face of the internet and to their knees. No longer would spammy links and black-hat traditions be able to surpass Google and its mighty rankings.

So, this year Google has further actioned their belief that it is those searching that dominate how and where you will rank in reference to your relevance. Similarly, with the mobile update, those who have perhaps been lazy in ensuring their sites are optimised for mobile search are likely to be paying a hefty cost in terms of traffic.

So, the Phantom update; what does this mean for you?

Well, it’s reasonably safe to say at this point that any content will need to prove valuable and relevant to your industry and business. Many have now renamed this the Quality update, which is not going to be a bad thing for those on either side of the web fence.

If you feel you need to clean up your mobile presence or need some help with your SEO campaign and content writing, then it’s probably wise to give us a call sharpish. Especially with our new mobile offering being as simple as it gets, allowing you to focus on the important things. Find out more about our solutions as a digital marketing company.