Google had an algorithm change when it finally launched the Big Daddy update.

Since launching, a number of people have complained about various things…dropping out from the search index entirely being some of the more extreme cases.

Apparently, this update tries to do a better job of handling link farms, link-buying, and reciprocal linking.

From the post, here are a few things that you might be able to figure out:

  1. Matt points out some sites that complained and looks at their footers. He points out links to non-relevant sites (i.e. links to ring tones sites from a real estate site). This may imply that linking to other, non-relevant sites means the trust of your site is lowered. This may also mean that links found in footers are checked a bit closer (maybe even in sidebars…although no indications of that in the post).
  2. Matt also points out reciprocal linking can hurt you. This is easily done by finding a reciprocal link within each site.
  3. Google may have a hard time distinguishing some links in the case of a) advertising and b) a network of sites so I wonder how these are addressed…probably by the total number of backlinks (especially through “trusted” backlinks).
  4. In a previous post, I remember Matt suggesting that Ads have a nofollow attribute in the link. This was probably suggested to prevent these side affects so this may address the ads issues. Additionally, most “larger” sites use ad servers and javascript so these links won’t even be seen…so my guess is smaller sites are affected more by this.
  5. This also seems to be a reverse in the position that Google has had in the past. They have always said that people cannot hurt your ranking by linking to you. Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case now. Now, your competitors may have a hard time catching up to you so can be able to get you delisted entirely (not just ranked lower) simply by buying a bunch of links from non-relevant sites to you! :-(
  6. Those taking part in SEO Contests better watch out where they place their links. If they place their links on their sites (or others), they can really hurt them (one of the example links Matt provided was also to an SEO contest n a real estate site).
  7. I wonder if they are “ignoring” blogs or doing something else with them. Its quite common for them to link to different themes almost randomly (except for highly targetted ones…but personal ones seem to be all over the place some times). I suppose they may not be hurting anyone too much since they usually link from one post entry as opposed to footer links which may be in all the pages of entire sites.

Keep watching to see what other modifications/improvements there are. Google has been receptive to feedback and have been making adjustments accordingly. WMW is a good forum to express your concerns and GoogleGuy (a google employee) reads and responds to posts there. If you think you may have been affected, more instructions (including a timeline for you to use to try and determine causality) are available at Matt’s post.

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