Google’s “MayDay” Update

In May Google updated it’s algorithm in  major way.  The change happened around the 1st of May and therefore has been dubbed the May Day algo change by members of WebmasterWorld.

In the video below Matt Cutts explains the May Day Algo in more detail and explains that it primarily affects long tail searches. 

So what does this mean for ecommerce sites? Potentially a huge drop in traffic and therefore valuable free sales from natural search. Before we look at possible solutions lets examine why Google made this change.

Background to MayDay

Back in March 2007 Google performed a tweak to their algorithm (codenamed Vince) that at the time seemed to have favoured brands in the SERPS. What this effectively meant was that sites with higher authority would be able to pass more improtance to internal pages of their site thereby giving these pages a better chance at ranking for long tail queries than smaller (unknown sites).

The MayDay Algorithm change seems to be backtracking from the Vince change from a year ago and seems to be aimed at providing all sites with an equal footing in the Google Search Results Pages (SERPS) regardless of the improtance/authority of the homepage but rather the importance of the individual page .

So whereas prior to MayDay, sites with high authority homepages were helping internal pages rank for long tail queries, MayDay favours internal pages with better content and more links above major sites regardless of the authority of the site. Basically, Google’s MayDay update solves this by taking each individual page at its own merit and ranking it accordingly.

Protecting Against Future Updates

The best way to protect against major Google algo changes is to always keep your consumer at the forefront of your web strategy.  If you’re an ecommerce site, differentiate your product pages by providing unique content such as product reviews, ratings, images, videos. The idea being that unique interesting cotent will make your pages stand out. Pages that stand out are linked to. Linked to pages rank.  This is what MayDay is about.