SEO Chatter: Algorithm Update?

Some guy on twitter we’re not following noticed that several of his keywords moved from page 7 – where they got 0 clicks – to page 4 – where they still send 0 clicks. Is this a major ranking algorithm update?

We reached out to Google to demand that they provide us with a change log of the algorithm, as well as a the mobile phone numbers of every employee who worked on this far reaching update, but at time of publication they have yet to respond.  Therefore we’re taking it upon ourselves to name this update “The WTFSEO Polar Vortex”, because it sounds cool and it gets our name out there for those few people who may not have heard of us.

What’s in The WTFSEO Polar Vortex Update?

Well, given that we’re not sure, anything we’d say would be pure hyperbolic speculation, and not worth the virtual ink it’s written in… but here’s what we think it definitely, absolutely does, and why it completely changes the game from this point forward.

1. Vowelrank – Google’s looking at the correlation between the vowels you use in your content in relation to the number of consonants that your competition is using on their main traffic driving pages.  Don’t be discouraged, there’s still a way to fool them… use more ‘Y’s
2. The Clipart Penalty – Are you using stock photography?  Then you deserve to be penalized, and The WTFSEO Polar Vortex is coming for you
3. noFollow rebranding – Having finally realized that nofollow is a misnomer, Google’s rebranding it to noPassingLinkJuice, you’ll need to update all your link attributes to the new standard by the end of November or receive a penalty
4. The Bing Ding – If Google detects that you have a verified Bing Webmaster Tools account, you’ll receive an automatic 5 rank penalty on all content until you remove that verification
5.  The AMP Stamp boost – In order for your site to show up more in the AMP carousel, you’ll need to put the AMP lightning bolt image on your home page, along with an explanation of what it means.  This ensures that you’ll be helping Google to educate your audience on something that they’ve not really explained to the public in general.
6. Something to do with local… to be honest we don’t really do much with it, so we’re not that bothered to really look into it.

So there you have it, The WTFSEO Polar Vortex update, brought to you by Google.  Tell us in the comments how it’s impacted your business.  Not that we’ll read the comments, or respond to them… but, you know, it makes us feel good to have the comments show up below the post, even the spammy ones selling certain adult pills that nobody (else ) (there, fixed that for you – ed) in the office needs.