Google Continues Cracking Down on Spam

At this point, every webmaster and Internet marketer is aware of the recent Google Penguin update that deployed an “over-optimization penalty” earlier this year. This new penalty means that sites utilizing black-hat SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing, would see a decrease in their search engine ranking.

This update differed from the previous Google Panda algorithm updates, which focused on penalizing user-unfriendly sites instead; however, the goal is the same: to display higher quality sites at the top of Google search results. Just last week, Google’s Matt Cutts announced that Google Penguin will see another change in an attempt to target low-quality “exact match” domains indexed by the search engine.

An “exact match” domain is a website URL that consists of search terms. For instance, Top10NewYorkSalons.com (which is not a real website) would qualify as an “exact match” domain because “top 10,” “New York,” and, “salons” are all search terms. Therefore owners of similarly built domains should anticipate a Google penalty in the near future.

Over the coming days, webmasters should get ready for changes in search results and rankings; however, tech analysts are more reassuring, and have noted that this update doesn’t mean all domains that include a keyword will see penalties. On the contrary, Google is simply aiming to eliminate a high search ranking for sites lacking in quality content, using black-hat SEO techniques, and only earning traffic due to their “exact match” domain.