This week Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam busting team, has announced that they are updating their “payday loans” algorithm that was first introduced last year. The aim of the update is to try to target what Google sees as “spammy queries”. Cutts has said that the update will affect around 0.4-0.5% of queries in the UK.
Queries for terms such as “payday loans”, “pharmaceuticals” and “casinos” will be targeted. Google are not saying that people should not search for terms such as payday loans. What they are aware of is that along with the reputable companies that provide these services there are also disreputable companies as well and the aim of this update is to try to remove these companies from their listings.
What makes a query spammy?
To understand what a spammy query is you need to first understand how websites get to the top of Google’s rankings. In spite of much that is said by search engine optimisation specialists about on page optimisation (making sure that your keywords are on your page, that your site is well coded etc) Google still relies heavily on the number of inbound links to a website to determine where to rank a site for specific queries. A link to website is considered to be a vote of confidence in the content of the destination of the link.
Google also pays attention to how authoritative the site that the link is on is. The more authority Google believes the originating site is the more weight Google will give to links from that site to others. The other factor that affects link building is the text that is included in the link. For example this link, on another website, would indicate to Google that TPW should rank highly for creative design agency:
One of the techniques used by the bad guys to make a website rank more highly is to hack into a good site and then build a page that includes links to the poor quality website that they are trying to get to rank more highly. By doing this they are able to manipulate Google’s rankings so that the spammy site ranks more highly.
How can you check if your site has been hacked?
You can use Google Alerts to help keep track of any spammy queries that your website might rank for. Google Alerts is a service run by Google that allows you to enter keywords. Google will send you an email when a new page has been added that triggers the keyword. If you use the following query in Google Alerts then you will pick up on some of the most common search terms that hacked sites use (replacing example.com with the name of your website):
[site:example.com (viagra|cialis|casino|loans)]
The new algorithm rollout is thought to be currently taking place.