After last weeks shenanigans with Google, I cannot help but sit here and gloat. For us and our clients the latest update was not a significant disruption. This is not the same for everyone, we are coming across forums and blogs where people are wining about the fact that not only has page rank on their sites slumped, but so have their rankings for search terms.

I know any good SEO Company would agree that if you were caught in last weeks update, then you really should have reviewed your strategy some time ago. Google have been sabre rattling on link building and paid links for quite some time. If this was indeed (as is being muted) a manual correction following Google's request, some months ago, to report sites that sell links, then being on Google's radar is not a good place to be.

The fact that the over manipulation of Wikkipedia recently caused a unilateral change in how it manages its links, raises concerns for the new craze of link building through social book marking.

It is only fair to say that the spam filters, be them manual or automated, are only going to damage rankings if your campaign lets them. Suffice to say any campaign needs variety; reliance on a single technique is destined for disaster. It is important to listen to the search engines to try to understand what they feel is important and what they are working on to overcome a spam technique. If there is a moral to last week's events; "don't be lazy, link build gradually using a variety of techniques and utilise your online/ offline PR campaigns and publicity stunt (link baiting) opportunities."

Matt Paines