Last year Google discontinued their Website Optimizer service in favor of “Experiments” which resides within Google Analytics under the content tab. Both options were intended for you to compare different website layouts to see which converted best.

The fact that Google offers experiment services like this free of charge is incredible. As with most Google products I assumed that Experiments would work correctly, but after some changes where the analytics didn’t match up with experiment results I decided to do a test.

On Jan. 25th I saw an update of some toolbar pageranks which reverted back on Jan. 28th. The changes seen were on 2 sites which I follow closely. Unfortunately I can’t tell how widespread the changes were since PR is no longer indicative of quality so I don’t actively track it across many sites.

In around 1996 Google started to implement a special penalty for sites which has since been dubbed the -950 penalty. The penalty continues to this day.

What Does It Do?
The 950 penalty is one imposed by Google which basically drops your website to the bottom of search ranks (page 7,8,9). It’s been said that it’s likely a negative multiplier which is applied to your existing rank that drops you to such low levels.

Why Does it Happen?
There’s a lot of speculation about why this penalty is

Have you ever opened a Google webpage only to see the message

This might seem concerning but it isn’t necessarily anything you’ve done wrong.

Google has a policy against “automated queries” which is software accessing their search results, pageranks, etc. to gather information. In search engine optimization you use tools which do this on a daily basis to keep track of how all of our client’s websites are ranking.

Google search results are split into two camps, organic search results – those which are unpaid for and show up on the left hand side of the screen under sponsored listings, and Pay Per Click ads (PPC) which traditionally fill the top 3 spots of a search page as well as the right hand column.

© 2012 WordStream, a Provider of AdWords and Pay-Per-Click Management Tools.

The infographic to the right is an interesting one which displays the importance of PPC to search these days. It shows that those top 3 ad positions get 41.1% of clicks whereas the top organic result position (the 4th listing down) gets only 8.9% of clicks.

In the past Search Engine Optimization (SEO) dominated the internet world since it was relatively easy to promote your site via backlinking, blogging, etc. Now we’re starting to see PPC become more prominant for two reasons:

 
So what do these changes mean to you? Well, if you’re not already actively using Google’s PPC network (Adwords) then you should probably start to remain competitive in the online marketplace.

Everyone’s complaining about Googles new policy which allows for data gathered about you to be shared accros their different services. Here’s what we have to say:

People act as if Google owes us everything for free and will be malicious with their use of our data.