In a video posted 30th May on Google’s YouTube Webmaster Central channel, Matt Cutts confirms the changes to the ‘Mayday’ algorithm were “deliberate” and are “not temporary”. He explains that the Mayday change was one of approximately 200 “tweaks” made every year and was entirely algorithmic with no manual element involved.
The purpose of the change – made at the beginning of May, hence its nickname – is apparently to better assess the quality of sites and match them more selectively to long tail searches, (A long tail search is made up of a more specific group of search terms, for example: “world cup July 11th 2010 Johannesburg tickets” as opposed to “football tickets”.) improve the speed and relevancy of search results and increase the amount of time users spend on Google As a result of these changes, it seems that the ones to suffer are from large ecommerce sites, where product pages may consist of just one item with no content to help attract external links.
Cutts’ advice to anyone finding their rankings drastically dropping is to improve the quality of your pages and website, ensuring it has strong, unique content and shows you are an authority in what you are promoting. If you’re discovering your position slipping, it’s time to reassess your site, your link structure, your content, find other ways to increase the strength of your pages like customer commenting and social media.
Mayday has pushed some panic buttons, but perhaps it’s just a case of shaking up business and finding some alternatives for SEO. If it’s here to stay, then it’s time to find solutions and adapt with the changes.
What we should really be worrying about, surely, is the superhuman speed at which Matt Cutts’ hair has grown since his last Webmaster video…
