Last month, Google released their most significant update ever called Jagger. I don't know if the name Jagger has anything to do with the current Rolling Stones tour but the impact was far greater than anything Mick could ever have generated. Many highly ranked sites fell from the top of the Google rankings while other sites jumped to the top. Based on my current ranking of 67th place in Google, number 1 in Yahoo and number 2 at msn.com, I have to guess my website was one of the unlucky ones that dropped from the top.

So what was the Jagger update all about? Many webmasters figured out how to trick Google by automating their blogs and populating their websites with articles downloaded from the internet. Automated programs were downloading free articles from the article directories like www.goarticles.com and populating blogs automatically then copying the same article to their website. The Google spiders saw the changing content in the blogs and websites, triggering the spiders to revisit the websites. This improved the website rating because Google kept seeing fresh, relevant content. Google now calls this blog spamming and their latest update punishes websites doing this. If you abuse Google's rules they penalize you and drop you in their listings.

Another unconfirmed change by Google (they never really tell you exactly what they've changed) has to do with links. In the past, Google rewarded you for having lots of links to your website from other websites. There are two kinds of links, one-way links and reciprocal links. Reciprocal links are when you trade links with another website. You add their link to your website and they add a link to your website on theirs. One way links are when they put a link to your website on their site but you don't a link to their website on yours. Another way to create one-way links is to write articles that contain your URL in the text and submit the articles to the article directories like www.goarticles.com.

With the recent Google update, it looks like reciprocal links are not as valuable as they once were unless the links are from a website with a high Page Rank rating. MSN and Yahoo still consider a link to be good no matter where it comes from because they don't use Google's Page Rank system. Google is looking for links from high quality sites which makes your site more valuable.

So for me to raise my Google ranking back to the top, I need to trade links with high Page Rank sites and get more one-way links back to my website from highly ranked websites. Or I can stop trying to chase or beat the search engines and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool's game I'm sure to lose.

Instead, I will focus on building rock solid links and popularity with the group that counts: my customers. By focusing on beating my competition and providing a top quality product, plenty of educational information and relevant content, I'm sure to move up and stay at the top of the search engine rankings.

It's something to think about for your website.