Google’s Bourbon update started a couple of days ago and as usual, many are seeing double when it comes to the SERP’s. Rankings are being shuffled, websites are dropping out of sight, popping back up. All sorts of small chaotic episodes are being reported. For a while, the Google Toolbar was graying out Page Rank for all sites. The most astounding part of this update though is that Google is acknowledging its occurrence rather quickly.
According to GoogleGuy, “Here’s the advice that I’d give now: take a break from checking ranks for several more days. Bourbon includes something like 3.5 improvements in search quality, and I believe that only a couple are out so far. The 0.5 will go out in a day or so, and the last major change should roll out over the next week or so. Then there will still be some minor changes after that as well. So my “weather report” … would be a recommendation that rankings may still change somewhat over the next several days.”
The “weather report” comment is in response to search engine marketing expert Danny Sullivan’s call out to the major search engines for an algorithm “weather report” in his keynote address at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, California in August, 2004. Yahoo and Google had both complied with this request in March 2005, with Yahoo offering advanced notice a day ahead of time and Google a couple of days after the start of their update.
Long holiday weekends are prime time to roll out new updates so its no surprise that Google took advantage of the search slowdown this past Memorial weekend in order to start implementing the Bourbon update. Having a weather report is fine for letting everyone know that an update is occurring, but a little advanced warning would be even better. Perhaps at this year’s Search Engine Strategies Conference, a call can be made to the major search engines to replace their “weather report” with a “warning shot” to cut down even further on speculation of whether an update is occurring or not.
