“Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced as a side note during his panel at SXSW that Google is releasing an algorithm update specifically to target sites over doing their SEO.
Matt Cutts said this is Google’s attempt to “level the playing field” between webmasters that build quality content versus webmasters who are just really aggressive SEOs.”
Well, as a web designer who knows his way around SEO, I find this amusing, and it’ll be fun seeing which, if any, sites are penalized. But in an era where most people have to choose whether they will allow Apple or Google to control their life (I chose Apple…) I admit that I do think that Google has done great things for websites in general.
In particular, I love the idea of Google Panda. Instead of leaving SEO to geeks who know nothing except metadata, finally we have guidelines based upon CONTENT instead of code. The very idea that it’s better to design a website that helps people find what they want quickly and get them there in a streamlined way is more important than metadata buried in page code.
I’m a believer that web design has been royally screwed up for a decade. Business sites now have to have the logo in a certain place, the navigation in a certain place, Home page content boxes, and so many other things that make modern websites all the same. While Google Panda won’t fix that (and will make those damned Home page boxes even MORE ubiquitous) at least Google is talking about actual site content for a change.
And for that (channeling Daniel Tosh) We Thank You.