Matt Cutts and the Google Update

Now this is what a Matt Cutts post should look like:

Just to give you a heads-up, I think a new set of backlinks (and possibly PageRank) will probably be visible relatively soon; I’m guessing within the next few days. I still expect some flux after that though, just to let you know.

Update: Just to clarify, these days with lots of smaller and larger changes happening at different points in time, it’s a little arbitrary to decide when to call something an update. That decision has usually fallen on Brett Tabke’s shoulders over at WebmasterWorld (WMW also chooses what name they want to call it when Brett decides enough has changed to call it an update.) Given that there should be new PageRank/backlinks visible in a few days (assuming no issues at our end), I wouldn’t be surprised if Brett slaps a name on it pre-emptively, even though there will still be some flux to come.

Sorry, Matt. But the Gmail posts don’t quite do it for me. ;-)

Now for what’s going on (via Threadwatch):

• Data loss at Google causes an incomplete index - suggestions of Googlebot panic spidering to rebuild it
• Semantic processing of links that mean established and varied links are weighted more, giving more power to internal links and less weight to link development work
• New filter for site-wide links
• Increased weighting of authorities to reduce presence of less established sites even further, to limit spam
• Google is evil, blah blah blah

There’s also much talk on the forums…