Google to penalize websites that abuse SEO

Websites that want to attract a larger audience will no doubt have to learn about SEO (search engine optimization). This basically allows webmasters to make their pages more accessible and noticeable when being searched for, but is there such a thing as bad SEO? Google has defined SEOs under two categories: white hat SEOs who use their “powers” for good and improve site usability, and “black hat webspam” whereby SEOs are abused to make webpages rank higher and gain more traffic.

Apparently Google doesn’t take too kindly to “black hat webspam” and has since changed its search algorithm and will punish sites that violate the company’s “existing quality guidelines”. The change will also reward sites that make “great sites for users, not just algorithm”. This change is expected to go live over the next few days and hopefully this will mean less spammy websites returned in search results in the future.

Naturally Google has deigned not to reveal how they are going about making these changes, but more information on white hat and black hat webspam can be found on the official Google Search blog.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Google