What is going on with Google? 1

[Cadwalader]

I have a site that was listed in the top 5 for over a year. And just overnight, literally, it dropped to 83 (that was the best rank).
I have read a few things today trying to figure out what the heck is going on and there was some mention about preventing "google bombing". From what I gather, that is a bunch of worthless websites linked to the site you want to have high rankings.
Anyway, is there anyone out there with any info on this? Hope I was of some help...
--OR--
Thanks for the help...
--Rich

 

[foxdev]

First, no one outside of Google really knows what happened, so the below is based on a little bit of evidence and a lot of guesswork:

Googlebombs: where a bunch of sites could link to mywidgets.com using the anchor text "blue smoke", so that Google would rate mywidgets.com near the top of the results for the phrase "blue smoke", even though mywidgets.com makes no mention of the phrase at all. Google's idea of using this makes sense; after all, if I linked to tek-tips.com with the anchor text "tech support forums", Google could reasonably assume that tek-tips.com related to that subject.

In order to counter Googblebombing, Google has in this latest index (Sunday) apparently has boosted the effect of page titles and prominent (H1, H2) text. So, in the above example, mywidgets.com wouldn't do nearly as well, because "blue smoke" appears neither in their page titles nor in their heading text.

The side effect of this algorithm adjustment seems to be a worsening of results. Not across the board, maybe, but in many, many cases. --------------
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