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If you own or run a website and are trying to increase your search engine ranking, you are probably very interested in learning more about the Google Big Daddy update. Google is one of the major search engines that determine site ranking and also one of the most popular among those searching for information. Many webmasters and online businesses design their content around Google's site ranking policies. While Google will not go into great detail in terms of describing the ways that they determine a website's ranking; there is a lot of information online written by knowledgeable SEO experts and successful online business owners.
The emergence of the Big Daddy update is causing much confusion and upset especially among the ecommerce community. When ranking a website, the search engines do not take into consideration how long the site has been in existence. Although it does sometimes take a couple months for your site to be included in all of the major search engine rankings, the length of time you have operated your site is not a relevant factor is determining how it ranks among other sites. Since Google's Big Daddy update, many veteran websites have experienced a drop in their search engine ranking. If you depend solely on you online business income, this drop in visitor traffic can have a devastating effect. Many webmasters and business owners are frantically struggling to try and figure out how to regain their previous rankings.
Websites that are designed mainly to provide the owner with affiliate income are being affected the most by the latest Big Daddy update. Often times when a website is created for the purpose of generating income from ads or affiliate advertising, the sight itself does not contain a lot of useful information. Webmasters or business owners will often use short keyword articles to fill the content of their pages. Often times these articles are written for the search engines only and do not provide content that is easily readable for actual visitors. Many of the articles may include the required search keywords but the articles themselves are not relevant to the topic and do not make a lot of sense. Google is now able to better detect this and the result is that these sites are being penalized for their marketing techniques.
Whether you are a new or experienced webmaster, the best advice you can heed in dealing with Google's Big Daddy update is to make sure your website contains content that is of value to visitors. Don't write your web pages just to please the search engine spiders. Try to have as much helpful and useful information as possible for visitors to your site. If you have a website that contains around one thousand pages of content, you are more likely to be higher ranked among the search engines than a site that only contains fifty pages.
Another important point to remember is that although Google has a big impact on how your site is ranked, it is not the only search engine available. In recent years, Yahoo has also become a popular search engine company for Internet users. Be sure that your site is listed with all of the major search engines. By doing this the Big Daddy update will not have such a dramatic effect on your ecommerce site.
Websites that have a high number of incoming links seem to be enjoying a reasonable amount of success since the Google Big Daddy update. It is a good idea to ask webmasters who have a product or service that compliments your site to add a link for your site to their web pages. However, before doing this you should make sure that the company is reputable and has a good customer service track record. Also, be sure that their site contains quality content that is valuable to visitors.
Although Google's new Big Daddy update may be having a temporary ill effect on some websites, this can often be overcome but simply making a few changes to your site. First of all, try increasing the number of pages linking to your website. Second check your site to make sure that all of the pages contain quality well written content. If your website is mainly composed of a lot of ads and outgoing links, do not expect to have a favorable ranking among any of the major search engines. In order to achieve and maintain a successful ranking among the search engines, you have to update and add new content to your website on a regular basis. Remember there are no shortcuts or quick fixes available to improve your site's ranking. A successful website takes time and patience.
Unless you are a webmaster or attentive to the developments in SEO there is a very real chance you do not know of “Big Daddy”, but Big Daddy definitely knows about you –or at least your website. Google's latest update is impacting directories all over the world. Described by Google as not a mere algorithm, but a ‘major infrastructure update', Big Daddy (satirically referred to on some bulletin boards as ‘Big Brother) seems to be an oddly appropriate name for a Google update which sent the SEO and web development world into total uproar over the ranking and indexing of their directories post Big Daddy; that is if one considers the explosion of webmaster bulletin board activity on that topic since the updates implementation. So intense and rapid was the discourse come mid-March that Google engineer and self-appointed webmaster liaison, Matt Cutt, advised Google to set up a team to address the ‘supplemental' problem faced, for no clear reason.
For this to make much sense for us less specialized folk, some rudimentary knowledge the Google search machine is required. At its most basic, Google serves an indexing and categorizing function so that when people search for something, certain algorithms have already determined (are always determining) where they will take the viewer to look. This indexing is performed by the Googlebot 2.1 and the Mozilla Bot, both of which ‘crawl' directories while applying content-analyzing algorithms to web content and code. These algorithms determine, among other things, which directories go into the main index (which is where you want to be) and which into the supplemental index, referred to in webmaster jargon as ‘Supplemental Hell' since not only does it exclude its contents from searches, but is notoriously difficult to escape once thrown in.
The functionality of a special corner for inactive websites, spam sites, and other nuisances extant on the web is clear. The current problem and essential source of confusion, however, is that active, original, and non-spam directories, post Big Daddy, are being cast into the supplemental flames for no apparent reason. As one of the many people to comment in response to Matt Cutt's ‘Gone Supplemental' blog post of March 22, 2006, “Our site has been redesigned…If I do a search…most url's are from our old site marked as supplemental results. Google is hardly indexing our new site…” And the problem was not limited to just one directory here or there, but thousands around the world, as the following comment, one of many, indicates. “I have a site with 4 sub domains including www. All of them have active content…all of them are supp and I do not see any return at all nor is google heavily crawling them. We are talking about 300k+ pages in the supp index for some reason.”
If it has not occurred to you to do so yet, it may be a good idea to see where sit your directories post Big Daddy. To see if you are directories are affected, simply paste the URL as a Google search. If the page comes up as missing it has fallen from main index grace. If this is the case with your directories post Big Daddy the first thing you will want to do is look for any code or content which might cause the bots to reject the page.
Any number of things from spam (or what the bots code as spam), hidden text, and copied or ‘scraped' content (closely paraphrased with the same keywords) can push a directory into Supplemental Hell. Depending in the use and complexity of your directories, the services of an SEO expert or organization might come in handy to take a look at your directories post Big Daddy. While some webmasters are reporting a return to normal, others are still faced with difficulties regarding their directories post Big Daddy. While Big Daddy is drawing attention to the need for more and better communication between Google, the web design world, and users, it may be some time yet before all the kinks are worked out and fluid channels of communication for problems like these are in place. For now the best one can do is pay close attention to the indexing of their directories post Big Daddy.