Just wanted to publish a small note addressing the Google update to sitemaps. If you’ve seen a shift in the search rankings and more specifically, the rankings of your site, it’s to be expected. I have compared the data ever since google noted in the old sitemaps that they were changing over to a new system.

Unfortunately, the new sitemaps had out dated data. This means, Google was not keeping the link counts up to date based upon the data the older version of sitemaps was showing – in the form of back links pointing to your website. When Google switched over to the new sitemaps, they used the out of date link data for websites and the spread in link counts for several sites we market was in the thousands. Needless to say, losing that many links in your profile can dramatically impact your rankings, which is exactly what happened.

Now, if this link data is the most current, it would imply google has significantly devalued certain links. However, across the multiple sites we promote to lesser degrees and or simply monitor, the main impact came on sites that were building the vast majority of link citations this year. So it seems clear it’s just a case of using “bad data” on Googles part.

So, as with anything with organic search. Don’t sweat it. Continue to develop good citations and eventually Google will update the link profile for your site as it continues the natural process of indexing the web.

Until Next Time
George Chaney
President & CEO
SEO King, Inc.