Last year Google made a substantial algorithm update that has been named “MayDay”.  For some the name MayDay is appropriate as they’ve lost many pages from the index (we’ve heard as bad as a loss of 90% of pages indexed) as well as major losses in rankings.

What does the Google MayDay change mean and why are people losing rankings and pages indexed?

MayDay, as Google Engineer Matt Cutts puts it, is mostly focused on “long-tails”.  Long-tails are longer keyword laden key-terms (e.g. “Nike Air Jordan Red & Black Size 6” as opposed to “Nike Air Jordan”).  The reason for this is that Google has billions of web pages in its index and only 10 results on the first page of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and therefore in order to make their search results more relevant they are targeting based on the level of specificity/generality of the search. 

This is not only beneficial to people searching but it is an amazingly great opportunity for website owners to drive more qualified targeted traffic and to convert that traffic to revenue.  It is statistically well known that the more keywords a searcher uses the more intent they have to convert.  They are more detailed in the item or information they are searching for and are more apt to click once they’ve found it. 

Furthermore long-tails provide an army of small searches.  What is meant by this is that your website may generate a considerable amount of traffic for a very general keyword search (assuming you’re already ranking well for that term).  Optimizing for long-tails and having Google rank you well for those long-tails can provide you with a vast amount of traffic though each long-tail search may only generate a small amount of clicks  they can all combined add up to a very considerable amount.  When you factor in that long-tails convert better then it only means that you have a great chance to drive even more actual conversions overall then from general key-term searches.

If you’re not already ranking well for either general or more specific long-tails then the long-tails provide a distinct opportunity to rank more easily and more quickly thus more cost-effectively than more general key-terms.  Why?  Because general terms have a lot of competition and long-tails have less.

Google’s MayDay algorithm change/update caused people’s pages to be ranked according to a different set of parameters.  Those who had pages ranking well for more general terms have had their pages associated with more specific long-tails and it has downgraded their ranking for the more general ones and vice versa.