Googles latest algorithm and infrastructure updates, known as Big Daddy, have been causing waves on the Internet and complete confusion as to what the changes mean.
Matt Cutts, a senior Google search engineer, has now clarified all in an article on his blog. It is very long and has resulted in a great deal of response comment. To save you reading it I can summarise the main points here.
The Big Daddy update is complete.
Google is intentionally crawling more pages from a site than they will index.
Make your site functionally correct before emphasising link building. Check – are all of my pages reachable with a text browser from a root page without going through exotic code. Try having a site map on your site. After you’re site is crawlable, then work on the HOOK (content) that makes your site interesting/useful and attracts links.
Make sure that your site is using your PageRank well. A tree structure with a certain fanout at each level is usually a good way of doing it.
Links are now very, very important.
Reciprocal links are declining in value. The quality and relevance of inbound links is more important.
Affiliate Out Bound Links are not helping crawling and indexing. There is some speculation that an abundance of affiliate OBLs is now having a negative effect on rankings.
The best way to gather links is to offer services or information that attract visitors and links on your own. Things like blogs are a great way to attract links.
The supplemental index is a back fill for the main index, used when insufficient relevant entries exist in the main index.
The supplemental results are typically refreshed less often than the main results
If your site does not have many inbound links it may not make it into the main index, it certainly will be crawled less and could exist only in the supplemental index.
The message is very clear. Sites must try harder to develop quality inbound links.
Prepare for the future and develop an effective and targeted link building program now or face the prospect of living without Google search traffic.