Under the thumb of Google's Jagger Update

As many of our newsletter subscribers and visitors take a keen interest in search engine ranking changes, I thought I'd write a few words about Google's latest update, nicknamed "Jagger".

Judging by the number of forum posts and articles on this update, it seems that Google changes haven't had such an effect on the minds of webmasters and site owners since the infamous "Florida update" in November 2003, which completely disrupted the search engine rankings of many a small business site at the time.

Unlike many of the regular Google backlink and pagerank updates, every now and then there's a much more noticable change to Google's ranking algorithms - this could well be the case with Jagger.

According to a well-regarded SEO Blog here:

"The changes actually started with a string of back-link updates that began in early September and continued into the first week of October. Two weeks later, the information Google has in regards to links directed towards a specific website is likely different than the information it had two months ago. That is likely the cause of immediate changes to the SERPS.

The most important advice in dealing with any type of Jagger is simple; don't panic."

Although some changes will be evident to anyone with an interest in Google rankings (such as changes in ranking position for certain phrases), from past experience, things do take a week or so to settle down. What you see now, may not be the case in a few days' time.

I noted that Bytestart has been given a PageRank increase to 6, which is fantastic, but there's no guarantee that Google may not have had the final word yet, and we may go back to 5 as quickly as we went up.

James Leckie