Google to Target 'Overly Optimized' Sites in Next Update

Earlier this month during a Q&A at SXSW Matt Cutts leaked that Google was working on a new algorithm change that would make GoogleBot smart enough to pick out and penalize over optimized Web sites that score well in the results.

Here's the transcript of what he said in that statement:

"What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don't normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO - versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now."

It's expected that this update will come out pretty soon, but Google’s been quiet about it so far. We're sure that when it comes out the usual uproar from SEOs and webmasters will arise and we'll know why then.

Worried about your site? If you've followed our lead then don't. Although this all sounds new and we're sure that sites will be hit - this is actually not a new concept. We discovered it years ago and actually named it the Oops Penalty. Like..."Oops we pushed it too far."

Remember that Google's ultimate goal is to make searching better for the user, while your goal might lean more towards getting the user to your site or building up link bait. Google stresses relevance and penalizes those who use tricks to make their site seem more relevant. The point of this update will be to reward those who focus on the user experience and align their goals with Google. If you align with Google's goal, you can bet you'll get rewarded for it.

We feel the sites that are the most vulnerable to this update are the ones with an unnatural inbound link profile. It's the most commonly abused tactic and very easy to target. So, if 90% of your inbound links have "KEYWORD" in them, that's not good. You need to start to tone that down and get those swapped out sooner rat...