Who Knows Anything? The blog of Chip Gallent. eBusinessman.

The Google Dance: Maybe it should be called the Google Jitterbug

As much as I promote Google, there are some strange things happening at this popular search engine. Some of you may have noticed that your search positions can vary from day to day - otherwise known as the ?Google Dance?.

Currently, Google is in the middle of a fundamental shift in the way it catalogs the web. In the past, Google has sent out its GoogleBot to catalog a majority of the web once a month. Then guys like me anxiously await the new results. They were posted about three weeks after we saw GoogleBot come into our websites. The key in the search engine game is to monitor that window of opportunity and make sure that your changes were made between the times the results were posted and when GoogleBot came back.

Now, Google has moved into a totally new direction ? a constantly updating index. What does this mean to you? It means that Google is reading your website every couple of days. And, their search results are changing EVERY day. It also means that Google has changed its ranking algorithm to reflect this ever-updating catalog.

Here is what we are seeing:

• Google has made several public statements that incoming links, or backlinks, are hugely important to their rankings. And, with an ever-growing index, these links to you from other sites have never been more important.
• Google is trending toward looking for the freshest content on any particular subject. This means that if you haven't changed your site in a while, you will be penalized or viewed from Google's perspective as stale.
• The size of your site has a big impact on your rankings at Google. Therefore, you need to continually increase the number of pages within your site.

Search engine optimization has never been more important. Everyone is getting better at building sites for higher rankings. Plus, many of the other search engines are giving Google a run for their money. In any case, make sure that you have the best content possible by continually updating your site, promoting it across the web and soliciting links to your site from other websites.