As per one of the twitter posts from Matt Cutts Google is to come down strongly on websites that use negative SEO strategies such as cloaking. Google however has not issued any public announcement on how it will respond to such practices. This twitter post from Matt Cutts indicates that Google will start looking at the black hat SEO practices in the first quarter of 2011.
It is high time that web masters looked at their own SEO strategies to ensure their website does not use any such negative practices. As per the twitter post from Matt Cutts, “Not just page content matters; avoid different headers/redirects to Googlebot instead of users.”
This may not just be limited to cloaking, Google may look closely at the other negative and manipulative SEO practices as well. So if webmasters that like their websites to rank well should clean up their websites from all kinds of black hat techniques. Google may purge the websites with manipulative techniques.
A complete re-indexing and ranking of Google is impending in 2011. Many websites may experience a drastic shift their ranking and their SERPs. Though we do not know when exactly these things will happen, it will certainly have a great impact on the bottom line of several websites and brands. Medium and small sized businesses are expected to get hit very badly as this is the most competitive segment.
Many website owners may not even be aware that their websites uses negative techniques as they lack the required technical expertise. It is therefore best for such webmasters to get their websites analyzed by an experienced SEO company so that they can stay away from all possible risks of cloaking and the other related black hat strategies.
Google is trying to create fair ground for the online competition whereby websites will be able to compete with each other in a healthy way. It is the responsibility of powerful search engines like Google to provide the internet community with a good online environment. Google has always been tough on websites that uses negative strategies and it is once again proving that it is indeed an industry leader by taking fresh efforts to curb cloaking.
Websites still have time to make things straight but only if they start reviewing their websites right away. The SEO industry is waiting to see how the changes effected by Google to its algorithm will affect the search trends and the ranking status of websites. As the SEO industry tries to come up with new strategies to boost their ranking, search engines too have constantly review their algorithms to continually provide a fair ground for competition on the web.
Ultimately it is the consumers that get affected, as they will not get the right information when they need it the most. The new efforts from Google are also likely to pull in other top search engines to review their own algorithms so that their popularity level does not dwindle.
