Making sense of Google “Florida” changes

November 29, 2003 | By Duncan | Filed Under General

Although mainly affecting non-blogs more than blogs, the recent major changes to the way Google does search, dubbed “Florida” is causing a large stir. Search giant Google servers over 60% of all searches on the net every day, and has been favourable to blogs in the past, providing traffic to many in the blogosphere including The Blog Herald, with over 2000 visits per month. Any changes to Google do affect us all, and are worthy of observing. If Florida has affected any readers please comment here and let us know so we can make more sense of any effect the changes will make to the positioning of Blogs on Google. Barry Lloyd of Search Engine Guide has tried to make sense of the changes, a worthy read if you are interested in visitors and where they come from an all-internet perspective.

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3 Responses to “Making sense of Google “Florida” changes”

Jim Elve on November 30th, 2003 12:10 am

From what I can see, you’re correct about the minor effect that this has had on blogs.

Commercial sites have been hit hard by this change. While Google may be on track by trying to weed out people who are ‘gaming’ the results, they should remember that the reason Google became popular is because it delivered relevent, accurate results. This is no longer always the case.

I handle SEO for several real estate websites. These were previously getting high ranking when someone searched for “real estate” preceded by a particular region, city or town. Some of these sites have fallen off the map. Google users are not getting the info they asked for.

Who loses? Everyone.
Darren Rowse on November 30th, 2003 8:38 pm

not sure it is having any impact yet - if anything google hits are going up
Serps by Trusylver on January 22nd, 2004 12:47 am

Florida seems to only have dropped those sites which were over optimised

there is currently an SEO competition running to get top position on google for SERPs

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