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Google Update: Yorkshire

by Brian Turner of britecorp.

[Ed. note: This article was written in April 2004, in response to what looked like a creeping implementation of a full expert system - which eventually was reversed at a later Google update.]

Another Google update - and I christen this one "Yorkshire".

It hasn't actually happened. Not yet. But expect to see it happen within the next 3 months. And don't act surprised when it does.

Certainly there's no immediate consensus on what Florida even was, though it is quite emerging that whatever Florida was, or is, it is almost certainly rooted in an "expert" based system.

Now, whether this system is a modified version of Hilltop, or TopicSensitive PageRank (as Dan Thies has championed), or else another unknown form, there's a particular common ground: it is spreading.

An expert system apparently requires a specified set of terms to work upon, but this set can also be expanded upon.

It was generally noted that Florida was not a blanket disruption of keyword searches, but a selective one. It was the introduction of the starter "expert system" set.

And the complaints that it was orientated at commercial terms was almost certainly based on a single issue - that of higher traffic terms being implicitly selected as the starter set in the expert system.

Austin is nothing more than an expansion of this expert set of keyword search terms.

Which is why those hit by Florida were mostly untouched by Austin - and those mostly untouched by Florida were suddenly hit by Austin.

There are still a lot of search terms out there unaffected by either. The expert set is bound to grow. You will probably see this expanded in the next update. That's when the next round of webmasters are about to get flattened.

And I name this update "Yorkshire".

You have been warned.

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