For years now webmasters and SEO have been talking that this time of year ( generally November) Google rolls out a special holiday algorithm geared toward online shopping. The question is simple Is there any truth to The Google Holiday Algo?

   Well we have never seen any confirmation from Google on this so must of us keep it as a myth, Legend or just plain something to talk about this time of year. Here is what we do know and you can make your own judgement.

1. For the past 4 or 5 year (at-least) There seems to be a shift in the algo that favors shopping sites.

2. Every year chatter on webmaster forums confirms that some “Holiday Changes” are happening to search results. See examples below.

From Florist SEO Watch Blog

Google’s holiday algorithm clearly favors Google’s interests rather than searcher interests as links to Google News & Google Images & Google Shopping already exist at the very top-top of each and every search result.

From seoslap.com

There are several theories as to why I think Google may have done this. First, Google claims to want to send their searches to the most relevant pages and perhaps Google feels that during the holiday season, people want to use these comparison shopping engines versus actually shopping directly from the manufacturer and feel that they are providing better results by doing this. That is the Google friendly theory. Another less Google Friendly theory is that a lot of these companies that had great visibility in Google no longer do and at the worst timing, just in time for the holiday season. What are these companies going to do? Adwords of course! Now that these companies don’t have the visibility they need from the natural results, they will have to pay to gain visibility through the Adwords search network and pay Google for every click thus significantly increasing Google’s revenue off this particular industry.

Digital Point Forums

Caffeine has been live for well over a month ( at-least that is what many people see) The test data center or sandbox data center if you will is exactly that, A place to test new algo’s. Many think including myself any results you may be seeing there now may be testing grounds for the traditional holiday update that happen’s around Thanksgiving.

SEORoundtable

Google tweaking rankings once again before the holidays? Some people are crying foul at the disruptions going on this holiday season. How could they!? Members on Webmasterworld are talking about some recent changes over yesterday and today that have occured recently to change search rankings. Some are wondering if it has to do with a penalty or just some general reshuffling going on? I had a new client call me a few minutes ago that overnight lost its rankings for a relatively uncompetitive term and wanted to know why all the sites changed in the top 10. Call it an early Christmas present from Google maybe?

A senior member on WMW said “Looks like some kind of data refresh to me. I’m seeing lots of movement in what’s normally a quiet sector.” Whether he is right or not, I am not sure, but I don’t think it has to do with any penalties and is more the normal flux we usually see. People are just a bit hyped and sensitive right about now to what is happening with their traffic. Any disruptions seem to be cause for panic. I would recommend those webmasters effected to have a nice frothy egg nog and wait it out.

So will it happen again this year? I guess time will tell. Some will tell you have your adsense budgets ready in case your site gets hit. Is there any truth to this statement? The only thing I can say is that Google stands to gain plenty through adwords during the holiday season. Some tweaks by Google could probably help that number if the tweaks are to Googles advantage. Will they do this? Do they do this? I do not have an documented answer for that. Do you?

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