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Florida Update

Early in November 2003 Google watchers started to notice some odd behavior with their favorite search engine. The Google Toolbar frequently showed the PageRank for sites as grayed out and this was coupled with big changes in the results for keywords they were tracking. Watchers also noticed discrepancies between the various data centers, a sure indication that a major re-indexing of the database, called a Googledance, was underway.

By the 14th of November it was clear that Google had made a serious update to their algorithms with many commercial and highly optimized sites heavily penalized in the search rankings especially on two and three keyword searches. In the all important pre-Christmas shopping period the change couldn't have come at a worse time. This update has been dubbed Florida, following the nomenclature used by hurricane forecasters. It certainly looked like a lot of websites were reaping a whirlwind. SEO pundits immediately started scrambling for theories as to what had happened and how the effects could be mitigated.

Florida Update

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