I’ve been advising others about their search presence since 2002, and this is the first time I recall ever telling someone to do something that could ultimately hurt them. Please consider this a “retraction” to my prior advice, and read it carefully.

In a stunning move, even as the dust settles from their deindexing of some blog networks last week, Google is announcing a brand new ranking algorithm designed to level the playing field for domains in competitive industries.

Each year, Google changes its search algorithm 400 to 600 times. While most of these changes are minor, every few months there’s a major update that significantly affect the search results, and this is one of those times.

Last night I did a search on Google because my wife had her car window smashed by some Portlandia hooligans  while she was watching the Central Catholic High School play.

The first result for “emergency auto glass repair” was Glass Doctor, and it was a combined local listing, so I picked up the phone and called them.

Doing a little bit if research, I noticed what I thought was odd behavior in Google local, taking me to directories instead of to a business, so I immediately jumped to a conclusion (imagine that!) and Twittered about it, pinging @davidmihm and @chiropractic

Michael looked into it…

You MUST know that Google can instantly tell whether a certain Google user who just left a review is a “real” user or not, right?

Google has access to everything a user does from their web browsing history to their Gmail habits, and they have for years. They even know where you live, so creating a completely fake / new user to leave a single review is stupid.

It looks like Google Boost has undergone a name change to AdWords Express, but it appears everything else has remained the same. (update 7/26 – Google just announced the change)

This morning while logging in to a client’s Google Places account, instead of seeing “create a Boost ad” or “See my Boost Dashboard” I’m seeing it referred to as Adwords Express.

If you look at the Wikipedia definition of a scraper website, it says

“A scraper site is a spam website that copies all of its content from other websites”.

Well Google has a new project, that in my opinion, is basically just a well done Google scraper.

I got a phone call today, that began “I’m with Google…” and of course I was highly skeptical. I take marketing calls for several clients, and this is the standard opening line for multiple unscrupulous SEO companies.

After just a minute, I realized it was the real thing, and he said he was part of the “Feet” team and he was conducting the newly laiunched phase 2 of their outreach program known as Google HotPot, which launched here in Portland in December.

This morning I got an e-mail regarding a domain from Google Webmaster Tools, pointing out that “…some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines”.

Wow! What the…?

It went on to say that “pages from yourdomain.com are scheduled to be removed temporarily from our search results for at least 30 days”.

I just tried to leave a review at Google, while I was logged in, and instead of being given the old review screen, I was asked to set up a new profile. Here, it’s easier to show you…

(*update four months later the name “Hotpot has finally been dumped. What a dumb idea that was anyway, huh?

Last night someone I ran into from my PCC internet marketing class told me about an article in the New York Times this Sunday, concerning a merchant who had seen an increase in his business since he started treating his customers poorly.

The eight page story that came out over the weekend is definitely worth a read, and quite thought provoking.

Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s Webspam team, and each year in the past, he’s been a participant in the “search engine smackdown” at Pubcon.

This year he had the stage all to himself, and I was in the second row for the session as he talked about the current state of Google, and about where they are going in the future,  and then I just sat idly by while he took some Q&A from the audience.