Google Focus on Quality Validated by Chrome Extension

As Google and its users struggle with the ongoing menace of Web SPAM, the recent Google Panda update, whose roll-out was just completed on April 11th of 2011, has received some validation by the Chrome Extension Blocklist opt-in user data. This signals a win for Google and its users.

We all know that to Google and its loyal users, relevancy of search results relative to a user’s search is the most important aspect of the search engine user experience. If users are not able to find what they’re looking quickly and efficiently using Google, they’re likely to try one of the other competitive search engines such as Microsoft Bing or Yahoo! which is now powered by Microsoft algorithms or perhaps one of the emerging new search engines such as blekko.

In fulfillment of its quest for relevancy and to maintain its dominant market share by continuing to satisfy its users, Google recently rolled out the Panda algorithm update in attempts to weed out what Google and many of its users consider to be low quality content otherwise known as Web SPAM.

What’s interesting about the Google Panda algorithm update is that after the rollout, Google was able to evaluate its efficacy using results from data gathered through the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension. Using this data, Google was able to evaluate how aligned its Panda algorithm update results were relative to the opt-in user data collected through the Chrome Extension. The results are what many would consider impressive.

This evaluation of Panda algomithm update evaluated sites on Chrome users blocklist compared to sites whose ranking (position within search results) were negatively impacted as a result of the implementation of the Panda algorithm update. According to Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, what Google found “If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them, which is strong independent confirmation of the user benefits.” According to Amit, though opt-in user data collected from the Chrome Blocklist Extension was used to evaluate the efficacy of the algorithm update, none of the user data was considered in the design and implementation of the algorithm update.

Time Clean up the SPAM (or to you Monty Python lovers, Bring Out Your Dead!)

The key take away for website owners, SEO consultants, webmasters, content creators and anybody interested in having their web pages rank higher in Google for the long term is the need to create quality, unique content and perform different optimizations as recommended by Google and the other search engines based on content relevancy relative to your targeted keywords.

If you have a website that’s about “affordable Internet marketing services,” then that website content should be about Internet marketing topics and the content should be materially original. The content should also contain useful (though subjective and very difficult to directly measure) information so that not only search engines rank the page well, but users find that information both relevant and useful.

As an aside, some of you may be aware that Google can validate relevancy of content, even for high-ranking content, by measuring how long a user stays on a particular webpage based on clicking on a search result. If your site is ranked number one for “affordable Internet marketing services” and users click on your site and then, within a few seconds, clicks back to the Google search results then clicks on the number two site and then stay on that second site several minutes, Google is able to capture this data and factor it into relevancy evaluation of the search results and make adjustments. Of course user time on page after clicking a search result is just one of hundreds of factors that Google uses in its algorithm to determine webpage relevancy, and ultimately, ranking in the search results.

If investing in content generation is part of the plan to promote your website, business, product, service and/or brand, and you want to reap the rewards from Google, then quality matters, and like it or not, at over 2/3 of the market share of US searches, Google matters!