Update Coming?

[golfbettingsystem]

How would you rate your friends SEO tactics? Is he using some kind of black hat seo? A friend of mine lost all his rankings in the last 6 months, but topic was credit and he did a lot of unnatural backlink building

Really quite clean I'd say, anchor text is almost exclusively on brand terms and links are from genuine sources i.e. local businesses, schools, websites for events they've sponsored etc as well as national sites where they've advertised.

[RacingJim]

Still seeing a lot of fluctuations which suggests to me something's imminent. I keep an eye on a friend's site in a completely different sector (estate agency) and the changes on those SERPs are massive - literally from position 1 to mid page 1 to oblivion from day to day...

I have had the same on one of my betting sites this weekend. Scary indeed, went from positions 1-3 for a set of juicy keywords (variations around a keyword that I've held for around 6 months), down to number 19-21 on Sunday morning, then looks like they're coming back to their normal places this evening. Who knows what the future holds for these rankings!?

[golfbettingsystem]

The change to remove ads from the right hand side has just washed through, I wonder if there was some testing associated with that update that's caused a bit of fluctuation recently.

[RacingJim]

Up to 4 ads now at the top apparently for 'highly commerical' search terms. Plus 3 at the bottom. Organic space becoming more and more lower down the page.

[golfbettingsystem]

Up to 4 ads now at the top apparently for 'highly commerical' search terms. Plus 3 at the bottom. Organic space becoming more and more lower down the page.

Yep, throw in a map on local search and #1 position takes a bit of scrolling that's for sure

[wonderpunter]

Yep, throw in a map on local search and #1 position takes a bit of scrolling that's for sure

sounds like a over optimization penalty is due... though after a few months people realize that crap is being shoved into their face to the highest bidder and scroll down every time they see those little yellow ad boxes..

[betarades]

Google will make changes in the next two months as they already announced.