Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, published a video this week that answered some of the most common questions about what SEOs and webmasters can expect from Google this year regarding SEO.
He addressed 8 different areas, most of which are designed to boost search results for good sites and hurt spammers and black hats:
- Updates on Penguin: The next update should launch in the next month and will have a deeper effect than the first update. Expect to hear an outcry from the SEO world when it launches.
- Advertorials: Google started going after sites that use advertorials to boost their rank and link profile. Google is going to take a more aggressive stance on advertorials soon, at least if they violate webmaster guidelines.
- Spammy Queries: Queries that sound sort of spammy, such as ‘pay day loans,’ were not in the past as likely to be targeted by the Google spam team. But Google is going to start looking at this more in the near future.
- Go Upstream: Google wants to go more upstream to discourage link spammers, as well as the value of those links they are getting from such sources. Google may be saying they are going to attack link networks.
- More Sophisticated Link Analysis: Google will get better at link analysis. They are in the early steps of a more sophisticated link analysis program, but it will be vastly improved once the new software is released.
- Better on Hacked Sites: Google is doing a lot of good work with hacked sites in their index. They are labeling search results of sites that were potentially hacked, and removed sites and warn webmasters about the hacks. Google is going to roll out a new program that will be better at detecting hacked sites.
- Boost in Authority: Google wants to provide sites that are an authority in an industry a boost in ranking. So if your site is an authority in travel, Google wants to see that related queries will give your site a lift.
- Panda Sympathy: Many sites were affected by the Google Panda update, but Cutts said that many of these were borderline cases. Google is trying to find ways to lessen this impact by looking at other types of quality metrics.
You always can expect something new from Google, be it SEO, new online marketing tools, or Google Glass. What will be next?