Google Dance Syndrome?

• Jun. 4, 2003

If you're a regular reader of our articles, you may have caught on to a lot of "webspeak" which we use from time to time.  We refer to spiders crawling - not real eight legged things, but software designed to index a website.  You may have heard or seen the phrase SERP.  This is an acronym for Search Engine Results Page.  You may also have wondered what the Google Dance was.  This is the time of the month when Google is refreshing their index.  It's called the dance because you can see listings fluctuate on a daily, or even hourly basis, as the database is updated to reflect changes.  This usually levels out within a few days, however, and the results become more stable.

An offshoot of the Google Dance is something called Google Dance Syndrome (you can learn more about this at the searchenginewatch site).  In essence, the syndrome is something many webmasters go through once per month when the Google dance happens.  They start to worry when their results slip, or the site drops from the index altogether.  Some webmasters literally lose sleep during this time, which can last for up to a week or more.

And then when the results do change for a few days they really start to panic, wondering what they did wrong to be penalized so harshly by Google.  If you go to any of the big forums, like WebmasterWorld you can watch peoples lives unravel online. Messages are posted on there faster than anywhere else in this world during the dance.  Speculation runs rampant, causing other to panic for no real reason.

Now here's the thing:  We've told all our clients and everyone we work with.  Virtually anyone we come in contact with don't put all your eggs in one basket.  While Google is the powerhouse here, there are other engines which can drive a significant amount of traffic.  Yet many times webmasters SEO's and site owners develop a kind of tunnel vision, only focusing on Google.  And when Google hiccups (as I like to call it), as it did last month, people start to panic.

Last month Google tweaked its ranking algorithm, yet again, to try and improve the results.  They started to go after pages with hidden text content by first giving them a short term ban of 1 month, then presumably a longer term one if the hidden text isn't removed.  Keep in mind, this is only one of many tweaks they will go through in order to improve the search results.

So why would Google go through the effort to improve on something which already seems so perfect? Well there are many reasons.  One is competition.  Many new players are coming out in the next few months to year.  MSN is developing its own search, as evidenced by a recent spider we found doing log analysis.  Yahoo still hasn't decided to flick the switch on Google in favor of its own Inktomi results.  And Overture is going to be introducing Altavista and Alltheweb flavored results as part of its offerings in the next year or so as well.

Another, more important reason for Google to change is that it does keep the results fresh and more relevant.  All the criteria they have said from the beginning which should make a good website ?clean coding, no spam techniques like cloaking, hidden text, hidden links etc. are starting to get filtered out so that the index does return the best sites out there.

Sometimes this is a problem for webmasters however as many like to design sites which are virtually invisible to spiders therefore they feel they must use some of these techniques to get into the engines.  This leads back to the original point of this article:  What is the Google Dance Syndrome and why should you be concerned?

If you are a website owner, or webmaster who doesn't use any techniques considered bad by Google, then you have nothing to worry about.  If your results falter in Google, wait a few days and see what happens.  With the last change we saw many sites drop for no apparent reason.

Even our own site dropped a few places for no apparent reason and we do not employ any of these techniques.  Even doing a comparative analysis of those sites listed ahead of us shows little consistency in the results - some have less incoming links while some have more, some sites have more javascript some have less, some have more text some have less.  There appears to be no rhyme or reason for the change in the index.

Which leads to my next point:  The last time Google did a major change like this (about last year at this time) it took two or three months to level out the results and in the end most people's positions were restored to their "pre-tweak" status.  Therefore if you can't wait through a Google dance, then you're going to positively hate waiting two or three months and hope things come back.

But think of what you can do in the interim:  First, don't change your optimization too much.  Consider other techniques like link building, finding other directories to submit to, building more content etc.  Consider increasing your PPC budget to compensate for any losses you may have from the Google shuffle.  I read an article about a webmaster that employed hidden text on his site, to move him to the top of Google's search results, only to be banned a short time later.   He said for the month he was out of the index he lost $60,000.  Whether this amount is accurate or not is one thing, but it does illustrate a point.  Be prepared for any web eventuality.  Don't put all your eggs in the Google basket.  And don't get too stressed about the once a month Google dance.  You know it's coming, and your powerless to stop it, so why worry?

Rob Sullivan
Production Supervisor
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning