The Google Ostrich Update - Google Panda and Penguin Have Nothing on the Ostrich

The Google Ostrich Update - Google's Latest Algorythm Update Coming Soon!!

Here we go again. Google has another update coming in a few weeks that has internet marketers quaking in their boots. It's official folks - the Google Ostrich is on it's way. There's no point putting your head between your legs and bracing for an impact. There's no point burying your head in the sand. This is the Google update of all Google updates. This is the algorithm change that you don't want to be caught napping when it comes.

Keep reading to find out what Google Ostrich is, the steps you can take to minimize it's effects and how you can adapt and improve your chances of being passed over by the Ostrich.

Google's Previous Updates - Panda and Penguin

Google really does love to keep internet marketers or SEO guru's on their toes. People make a living by ranking pages on search engines for keyword phrases and then making money selling advertising to those eyeballs, or selling products directly or through affiliate links. Even if you are a humble writer on HubPages, Squidoo or Wizzley then Google Ostrich could still seriously impact you. Afterall, Panda didn't care if you were an A class writer and neither did the Penguin. It didn't matter if you had your own websites or you wrote for a revenue sharing platform, the Google algorythms are there to knock people off their SEO perches. That's all they care about; how their search engine results are generated and the advertizing revenue they generate. You are not important to them. You are at their mercy and have to accept the potential of being whalloped by a kung-fu Panda or a diving Penguin.

Learn more about Panda and Penguin Updates

The Google Panda Update

The first Panda update came as a shock to the system. The Panda wasn't interested in recycling. He wanted new content and he wanted it now. Nothing copied, one hundred percent original if you so please. This knocked a lot of people off the first pages of Google's search results and many have never recovered.

Many internet marketers were affronted that Google could ruin their income literally overnight. When you go from ranking in 1st place to not ranking at all, it suddenly becomes crystal clear exactly how much Google can effect your bottom line.

Some of these people decided to change how their business operated. They decided to concentrate on gaining traffic by paying for it. Although they hated Google, they still needed them and increased their advertizing spend through Google Search and placing Ads on the Google Content Network. Others increased their advertizing on platforms such as Facebook and Plenty of Fish. There was a surge in PPV advertizers and also buying banner ads suddenly became the next big money maker. Another last ditch attempt to promote dodgy CPA offers arose, especially the zip submit. When these endeavours failed, people invariably returned to trying to rank in the organic results of Google, or gave up internet marketing all together.

Of course, there were websites and pages that were unaffected by the Panda and continued to keep thier rankings. However, Google continues to update Panda so just because it didn't effect you before doesn't mean you'll be safe in the future.

Learn to protect your sites from Penguin updates

The Google Penguin Update

Recently there was also the Google Over-Optimization Penalty. Google basically penalized sites that were supposedly keyword stuffing their content in order to get better rankings in the search engines. This was dubbed the Penguin Update and resulted in sites being penalized for telling Google what their sites are actually about. It also penalized over-optimized backlinks and unnatural backlinking practices.

Yes there are sites that deserved to be hit and were clearly just writing for search engine rankings and wrote something like the following for content consistently, "this is the review for keyword. This keyword will help you do everything you could ever imagine. Without this keyword you will die and you need this keyword to survive." You get the point. Not pretty, not helpful and pretty dumb. However, others were caught in the crossfires and have been unfairly penalized.

In terms of backlinks, people were trying to ran for one keyword and all their backlink anchor text was this particular keyword. It didn't appear natural and isn't how normal people would share your content.

Did I happen to mention yet.... Google doesn't care. In fact, searchers have been complaining that the search results are getting worse and not better. Immediately after the Penguin update people complained that some of the worst sites they've seen, with thin or no content, were now ranking in the first three positions in Google for highly competitive and high traffic terms.

Google's Other Updates

Of course there's been lots of updates. We are not solely limited to the likes of Panda and Penguin, and the upcoming Ostrich update. There was the Ads Above The Fold Update, which penalized sites that looked overly promotional. You've seen those sites where the top third of the page purely consists of ads. Well those were penalized as low quality sites. It was fairly easy to fix by removing some of the ads, but of course this had an impact on profits. Google doesn't care.

If you've ever looked at a Google search results page you'll see what I mean. The first half of the page and the whole right column are paid ads. Is this not what the Top Heavy Update was penalizing. Another case of Google telling it's customer to "do as we say, don't do as we do." Very similar to the bully in the playground mentallity. Except Google isn't using cuddly toys, they are using the Panda, the Penguin and the Ostrich. I am sure there's a joke in there somewhere about what happens when they all go to a bar....

There was also the deindexing of all the major Blog Networks that thousands of people had been using successfully to gain high PR backlinks, in order to move up the rankings in Google. Why Google waited so long to shut this down is strange. Perhaps they wanted to piss off more people by getting people hooked on these Blog Networks, which allowed the Blog Networks to make a bundle in membership fees and allowed website owners to rake in the cash by ranking for highly competitive and lucrative terms organically.

Impact of Google Updates So Far

From the Google Updates already discussed such as Panda, Penguin (Over-Optimization), Ads Above the Fold and the deindexing of the Blog Networks, people will be scratching their heads wondering what's left for Google to mess around with. They've messed with your on-page SEO by stipulating you must have original content, under no circumstances are you to tell Google what your page is about and you should limit the number of ads you have where people are most likely to see them and click on them. So tick, Google doesn't want you to make money from your website either. Not that you'll be able to once you are no longer ranked and you have no ads to monetize your site.

Off-page, Google are sending messages to people they believe have unnatural backlink profiles. They have effectively shut down the Blog Networks, therefore limiting the number and quality of potential backlinks you can get. In effect, these will also impact your potential and actual income. But don't worry yet. You haven't seen what Google have up their sleeve yet. They have the mother of all updates coming up. The Google Ostrich update is totally gonna kill it and most people won't even see it coming.

Since Google are big bullies in the playground they can stipulate almost any rule they desire. There goals are to increase their profit margins and increase the flow of funds towards them. With Google Ostrich they can do just that.

What is Google Ostrich?

Google Ostrich is a way for Google to make you promote their products even further. They want to penalize sites and pages that have ignored them in the past. You might have dodged previous updates such as Panda and Penguin by keeping your head down and doing only white hat SEO, but you will have to take action now if you don't want to be penalized by Google Ostrich.

Google recently changed their Privacy Policy so that it is now almost one policy across the majority of Google products. Google is also doing their best to lock consumers into their products by making it necessary that you have to have a Google account to be able to use their services. For some services you are actually forced to set up a Gmail account if you wish to use the other Google services. However, Google is about to take this a step further with the Ostrich update.

Google Ostrich will measure how much interaction your pages and websites have with Google products. The more you show Google love, the higher your search engine rankings will be. If you continue to ignore Google, then you will be penalized.

How Can You Protect Yourself From the Google Ostrich?

Many website owners and internet marketers want to know how to insulate themselves from the wrath of Google. The answer is really simple; slap as many Google products onto your site as you possibly can. Here's a few examples of what we mean.

Look at your existing web page and try and figure out where you can incorporate the following Google components.

1. YouTube embedded videos - The more YouTube videos you can embed on your site the better. You can add these to hubs too and Google will give you a few points for doing so, which will help with your rankings. If you already produce videos and stick them onto your site directly, you may want to change your tactic. Upload the video through YouTube and then embed it on your site. This way Google will give you the credit for your videos.

2. Google Adsense - Sites that have Google Adsense on their pages will get bonus points and will be favored in the search engine rankings. If you have the maximum ads on the page and still make the page not look spammy then bonus points to you. This is extra revenue for Google so it's simple to see why they would reward you for this.

3. Google Analytics - If you use Google Analytics to measure your websites performance then this is optimal for Google. They want information about your websites. This gives them even more insight into what you are doing across a number of web properties. Google likes free information. They can use his information to design future Google updates and also for advertising revenue.

4. Link Your Google Accounts Together - Even more points are awarded to webmasters who join their Google Adsense accounts to their Google Analytics. This means you would also have added your websites to the Google Webmaster tools. Not only will you be able to see what your top performing pages are, but so can Google. This is valuable information to them. You wouldn't share this information with other people yet you share this information with Google everyday, and so do millions of other people around the world.

5. Gmail - In order to open many of these Google owned accounts already mentioned you have to have a Google email address, more commonly known as Gmail. This is how Google plans to increase ad revenue further as the number of Gmail accounts opened will continue to grow, Inside Gmail, near the top of the page are further ads., earning further revenue for Google.

6. Feedburner RSS Feeds - When you burn a RSS feed, you'll earn a lot more ranking points in Google if you use Feedburner, This is another Google owned product and you will earn even more points if you monetize your feed using the Feed ads in Google Adsense. Again more revenue for Google.

7. Mobile Enabled Sites - Make sure your sites are mobile enabled and load quickly on mobile devices. Google wants your content to be viewable everywhere. Even more points are awarded if you then serve Google ads on the mobile platform, especially if your sites are optimized for Android devices. In case you didn't know, Google owns Android too.

8. Google Search Bar - You might have a search bar on your site, but if it's not the one provided by Google within Adsense, then not only are you missing out on potential revenue, but you will soon be missing out on bonus Google ranking points. It's really simple to set up and can replace the existing search bar you have currently.

9. Load Speed of Pages - The speed at which your web pages load is a factor in being ranked in Google. If your page loads too slowly then you can be penalized for this; especially if people are clicking away from your page before the adverts have even loaded. Needless to say, Google dislikes this. For this reason, they will continue to monitor your page load speed using Google Chrome.

10. Google Chrome - Make sure your website looks good in Google Chrome. More and more people are switching to Chrome from Firefox as it continues to get slower.

11. Google Wallet - If you have an online store then make sure your site is Google Wallet enabled. This was previously called Google Checkout.

12. Google+ - If your site isn't Google+ enabled then you are going to suffer greatly in the search engine rankings. Google wants it's users to share content with each other. The theory is that only good content will be shared. The more shares you have the more popular your page will become and Google will see it as an authority that people trust. Google doesn't care about how many Facebook likes your page has. This is outside the realm of Google and is therefore irrelevant. The plan is for Google+ to continue to grow and have more members than Facebook.

13. Blogger - The more backlinks you are able to accumulate from related Blogger web pages the better you will rank. This is because this is another Google product. It's easy to do this by opening up your own Blogger account and then participating on other people's pages. They will in turn look at your page and make sure you have a link back to your main website. This will encourage people to link to your homepage and your Blogger account. Bonus points are added if you add Google Adsense units to your Blogger account.

There are other Google products that you can add to your site or help in terms of off-page SEO, but I have tried to stick with the most vital ones. These are also the ones most people are able to implement on their site quickly and make a serious impact.

Remember folks, points equal prizes. In this case the points will move you up the Google rankings. Ignore Google Ostrich at your peril!

Of course, Google won't tell us which of their products will earn you the most points, but it's simple enough to add a broad spectrum of their products across your web properties.

The Google Ostrich Hit You and You Don't Know What to do Now

For those that got to this hub too late and the Google Ostrich has already hit, I sympathize with you. However, it should be relatively simple to fix the dilemma you are in.

Perhaps you just weren't aware of what was coming your way. In that case, make the changes suggested above and when the Google Ostrich comes running past again your site will be rewarded with great rankings.

If on the other hand you don't agree with the required changes and feel upset that Google is dictating how you do business it's really nothing new. The bigger Google get, the more power they will wield. You will have to chose to stick with your morals and suffer the consequences of not doing as Google wants you to do. This will result in rubbish placement in the search engines and a significant drop in revenue. Otherwise, you'll have to swallow your pride, bend over and accept what Google is doing to you. Welcome to the Google Ostrich.

What Would You Do if the Google Ostrich Hit?

Of course the Google Ostrich doesn't exist. This hub was written as not only a joke, but also to highlight the power Google wields over millions of people. Also remember that Google can change the rules at any time. Although you may have not been affected in the past, you have very little power to dictate what will happen in the future.

Disclaimer - No Google animals were harmed in the writing of this article including the Google Ostrich, unfortunately I can't say the same about internet marketers and webmasters. I expect they will continue to hurt as long as Google is in the drivers seat.