From Panda to Penguin: Understanding Google’s Algorithm Alterations.

  In the interest of keeping your Google audience clicking toward your store and your service, holding down that position and keeping the first page on the searches speak more volumes and spark more sales than a Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or yellow pages section combined. That’s just simple business and strong reputation management. But what you see, and more importantly, what your customers see is not the same as what Google sees through the eyes of its constantly-shifting and ever-altering algorithms.

Over the past few weeks, businesses have seen significant rises and drops with the deployment of Google’s algorithm overhaul, known to the tech-world as Penguin. Through the cracks of our concrete jungles, much like Google’s previous update, Panda, Google has begun to crack down on the tactics used by designers and e-commerce tacticians alike to cheat the system for bigger connections. The updates have created systems that enforce traffic losses and penalties for websites and businesses that engage and overindulge in spamming sites with keywords, revolving-door back link matrices (known as Link Spam), and notoriety for bad practices. Bad practices include link manipulation (links to sites that have been marked with malware, over-usage of paid-links, pop-up ads, etc.), including Malware on the site, the usage of hidden/shady/duplicate/keyword-enjambed content, those super-annoying JavaScript redirects (you know who you are), and Doorway pages. With the implementation of the Panda and Penguin updates, Google has not only learned to see it, but frown upon it as well.

The truth is that this wasn’t done to hurt business but more to protect consumers from getting annoyed in their endeavors toward finding their solutions. If anything this is a convenience. Imagine a system that is able to tell you the legitimacy of vanity 800 numbers without even having to deal or hear a tone? The better businesses have taken this update in strides and have seen little-to-no repercussions; if anything they’ve witnessed an improvement.

If you’re looking at your e-commerce approach and thinking of ways to get around this March of The Penguins, get Morgan Freeman’s narration out of your head and get real. Stop trying so hard. The purpose of these Google updates is to keep your business honest. Keep your links, keywords and your vanity phone number relevant and proprietary to the services you’re providing. As we begin to age and evolve with technology, the more you work to build your business as something it is not, the less your business is going to work for you no matter how hard you’ve been working for it.