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When Yorkshire? An addendum

by Brian Turner of britecorp.

The article about the "Yorkshire Update" was written as a clear response to the movement of Google from the Florida to Austin updates.

To all intents and purposes it looked as if Google was extending it's expert set for the expert system I personally believed had been implemented (though whether a straight Hilltop, or variation, couldn't be determined immediately).

And that meant that if this was the path Google was on, it would only end when the entire set of search terms on Google fell under the expert system. This blanket covering of all useful keywords would be the real "Yorkshire Update".

However, since this article was originally written, Google has done a very spooky thing – Google has effectively re-written the SERPs to what effectively looks like pre-Florida results.

It's important to ask why, and what this means.

Firstly, it's good news for many, but let's not get complacent.

Google is looking at a near stock flotation, and when it finally proceeds you can be sure that Google wants to look like a quality product offering a quality investment to investors.

Florida and Austin created a furore in the webmaster world. It even made the BBC news. It was news. You can also bet that a lot of potential large investors would have been asking questions.

A particular question you can be sure was raised, was as to whether investors would be buying a popular and useful brand name for investment purposes, or a useless has-been that could only look forward to losing its market share the way Alta Vista once did.

Remember, we're only a couple of years out from the dot com bubble bursting, so you can be sure that for investors, real questions need real answers.

There's every possibility that the changes now made are nothing more than a stalling tactic for the benefit of investors, and help grease the IPO.

There was an interesting idea that Google were trying to implement an expert system of their own ownership, rather than rely on the Google PageRank algorithm, which is actually owned by Stanford University.

If this is true, we could yet see Google part with PR in all but name.

But how likely is this?

Really, it depends entirely on how Google wants to be perceived by investors for its stock flotation, and also how the investors (or executive board, for that matter) care to direct Google afterwards.

Don't think that just because the Florida results are now gone that they won't ever come back. And don't think that just because the results are good for the moment, that therefore Yorkshire will never happen.

It could.

So remember that while you admin your websites for the moment. If nothing else, all that Yorkshire really signifies is the real need for a far better and wider IP linkage by webmasters to their sites.

It is those sites with many links from few sites that are most vulnerable, and the most likely to be affected by any major updates at Google.

You have been warned.