How is this going to affect YOU?

To be honest, I imagined that Google somehow did this already, at least to some extent.

I'm sure I've seen/heard Cutts previously suggesting that. (I suppose he might have been saying they're trying to strengthen it, or they intend to, or something?).

Anyway, it'll doubtless slightly benefit all my sites, just like all last year's "Panda updates" did: whenever they effectively remove a bit more of the dross from the top of the SERP's, it helps you to rank a proper site. If you have the sort of site that provides people with something approximating Google's overall perception of what they want to provide their users with, and don't ever try to "game the system", these things will never be a problem: only people who buy poor-quality, high-quantity backlinking services/software need to worry about this stuff, I always think.

The regularity with which better quality, content-rich, lower-PR pages with far fewer backlinks are outranking poorer quality, thinner, higher-PR pages with far more backlinks, in Google's SERP's, is certainly becoming more and more noticeable all the time, isn't it? I'm just hoping for "more of the same", really ...

I've not been affected in the past with Google's changes and don't think this will have an effect either.

I've never really understood why one would one would cater to the search engines rather than people. :confused: I'm not aware of any search engine every purchasing anything from anyone, only people; visitors and clients who wanted what was being offered.

Some may think if they game the system of the serps, they'll rank higher and therefore get more traffic which would create more sales. The problem with this faulty thinking is that the traffic arriving will be people and if you've not catered to their wants and needs, they're leaving.

I've never been able to understand that line of thinking.

Terra

Exactly Jonathan!

Game, cheat, trick, fool...all of it! They have stated over and over again that what they are trying to achieve is a good user experience. And that makes sense as it is their users that they benefit from.

As one example, when they have directed people to a site by listing them on the first page of results for certain terms and that site ends up having nothing to do with the term or is so stuffed with the term that reading is difficult, it was not a pleasant "user experience" and I'm sure the user lets Google know about it.

I think it's sort of along the same line as deceiving titles.

For instance, if your title is "Elephant Brings Traffic To A Standstill In New York City" and the article is about a white elephant sale that a local New York high school track team is holding to raise funds for new uniforms, well you can just hear the "ugggh" of let down from the reader. You can just envision the eye roll as they read the article.

They were expecting to find out how and from where an elephant escaped, etc. They were curious to find out if any accidents were involved, etc. But you've just let them down and they are very unlikely to go support the fundraiser rather than if you had a snappy title regarding the fundraiser.

Bottom line is to get rid of listings leading to poor user experience.

Terra