Google has updated its position on blog commenting in this post on their official webmaster blog:

Hard Facts About Comment Spam

What is clear from the post, crystal clear, is that Google is out to spot and “at best” ignore your efforts:

“Google has an understanding of the link graph of the web, and has algorithmic ways of discovering those alterations and tackling them. At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy linkdrops which would count for little or nothing because Google is pretty good at devaluing these types of links.”

So if your current link building strategy relies heavily on finding blogs to add comments to for the purpose of getting a link, you need to re-evaluate right now.

I personally still intend to find relevant blogs, and will post relevant comments that add value to the site, and I will continue to add my site name and URL to create a backlink in that comment.  What I will be stopping is visiting any old blog, either personally or using automation, to drop links through comments.

Google has spoken, again, so it is time to mix things up again and evolve your link building strategy if it involves comment spam.

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It is official, Google’s “Caffeine” algo-update is coming very soon.  Described by Google as “next-generation architecture for Google’s web search,” Caffeine will be the largest update for several years.

According to Google’s Webmaster Central blog, Caffeine will be “the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

Sounds serious…

You may or may not know that Google has been soliciting feedback from the online community for months now, by making their Caffeine update publically available at http://www2.sandbox.google.com. However, that URL now just displays a “thank you” message.

So if you already know via checking that your site will take a nasty SERP fall, or you are unaware of how your site will react to Caffeine, then now is the time to take action and educate yourself, rather than leaving yourself open to a nasty traffic drop as a New Year present.

If you employ an SEO company, and have not heard from them about Caffeine already,  phone them and ask them what impact Caffeine may have. If they cannot tell you then I would recommend making a new years resolution to find a new SEO company!

Matt Cutt’s has now confirmed that the Caffeine update will go live “after the holidays” (not particularly clear terminology for those of of use living outside the USA, but hey Google has always been bizarrely global in audience, while at the same time failing to educate it’s spokespeople to talk in a non-USA-centric manner).

“The feedback on Caffeine has been very positive, so we’re ready to move from the developer preview to the next stage of the roll out: going live with Caffeine at one data center. This means that a small percentage of Google’s users will benefit from the technology behind Caffeine in their regular searches.

I know that webmasters can get anxious around this time of year, so I wanted to reassure site owners that the full Caffeine roll out will happen after the holidays. Caffeine will go live at one data center so that we can continue to collect data and improve the technology, but I don’t expect Caffeine to go live at additional data centers until after the holidays are over. Most searchers wouldn’t immediately notice any changes with Caffeine, but going slowly not only gives us time to collect feedback and improve, but will also minimize the stress on webmasters during the holidays.”

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