Hi Christoper,

Excuse my long rant - I've been thinking about the "Florida" update a lot lately.

I think Google is continually trying to limit the intentional manipulation of their index and they've been very successful at doing this. Every once in a while though they put out a filter that goes a little too far and ends up penalizing sites that may have unknowingly used techniques that Google views as manipulative. I think Florida was another example of this and Google is now trying to amend the situation while at the same time avoiding publicly admitting that there was a problem with the algorithm in the first place.

For about a year now I've expected Google to build some type of correlational spam filter, something that would compare the content of a web site against a long list of suspect optimization techniques and only penalize the page if it contained a total number of these techniques that was above a predetermined threshold. Sort of a bell curve for spam. Given the wide range of suspect causes for the recent penalizations I'm wondering if they may now be using a filter like this.

In response to my suspicions I've actually taken to deoptimizing some of my client's sites somewhat (removing alt tag keywords, minimizing identical inbound link text, etc). My clients tended to do very well with the Florida update so I'm thinking I may be on the right track with this strategy. It’s pretty ironic though - ranking better by optimizing less.
</rant>

Marshall

Het Everyone

My name is Tom and I own an online retail store called A Day At The Beach (www.ADayAtTheBeach.Com) I joined to try and get some marketing, SEO, Advertising information from you professionals. Willing to trade beach items for SEO (<:

Tom

My name is Captain Sweep. I'm a pi-rate. I'm not quite your ordinary pirate.

I've been developing a multi-dimensional thinking system called the Inflow Matrix for the past 10 years. The original intention was to create thinking system first, without the limitations of the technology.Then build a software system that could run any organization with the technology that was available.

I am currently experimenting with using tribe.net as the place to build the worlds first Shared Knowledge Community that uses the inflow matrix as the operating system.

This community is going to be the design team for The Utopian Game,eh? a global game to promote the creation of a sustainable economic system.

I see this as one piece of a much larger operating system. Its a lovely tool and you have done a great job.

I'm a systems designer and I find most of the time no one has any idea what I'm talking about.

Why am I a pirate? Because the governments are corrupt and verging on insanity.

The way to shift from authority to autonomy is to have a holistic information system. Makes sense to have it match how your mind processes information.

I'm very interested in internet marketing. I developed a marketing brainstorming tool that integrates into the Inflow Matrix so I have quite a knack for creative brainstorming.

I just joined this tribe...I'll be of service if I can to those that request and I'm looking for allies for me very secret plan.