Drinking Brandy Slows Down Response Time: So I am slow to get the "official" name of the last Google Update. It is Update Brandy, I thought it was Jason or Zorlax or something.

In this WMW thread Google Guy talks about semantics, SEO, & overoptimization.
(found on Search Engine Blog)

If we dig deeper into the Google Update Brandy thread we enjoy a great laugh. Read what MakeMeTop post, and then read the reply.

Google has an ad policy which prohibits criticizing other groups or companies. Recently Oceana tested Google's ad policy by placing AdWords ads critical of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. "Washington D.C.-based Oceana believes Royal Caribbean pollutes the oceans by improperly treating the sewage on its ships. It hoped to publicize its complaints by paying to have its ads appear when terms like "cruise vacation" and "cruise ship" were entered into Google's search engine."
(found on Mecury News)

Recently Google has also been slammed for an open policy on pharmaceutical drugs which it was forced to change.

Some people claim censorship with these changes, but Google is still open to advertising if you know how to do it. They still rank George Bush very high for phrases like "unelectable" and "Misserable Failure." Other than AOL, few search engines are trying to censor their fall through search listings.

I personally am making honest feedback about drugs like Paxil and Zoloft more accessible. One of my personal blog pages list well for even the competitive phrase "Paxil side effects."

Google has been in a state of flux for a while now. In many of the recent algorithm changes Google has had a pattern of bringing junk just before updates.
A couple recent searches have revealed some garbage floating to the top for me. They are obviously shifting their setpoints or algorithm again. This is one of the few occasions where I do not mind seeing my site drift down a bit. A recent Google search for "search engine marketing" placed InternetMarketingWebsites above SearchEngineWatch, which seems odd to me unless they have done some really aggressive stuff at InternetMarketingWebsites recently.

Many people have certain restrictions which prevent them from being able to download the Google Toolbar, which was designed for the windows operating system. The Google Toolbar was one of only two locations Google intended to display Google PageRank.

How do I get Google PageRank Without the Google Toolbar?
Well there are a couple options for extracting Google PageRank without the toolbar.

• The Google Directory: The Google Directory is created from an RDF dump of the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). To find out your Google PageRank using the Google Directory the page must be listed in DMOZ. Please note that the scale for Google PageRank is different in the directory and toolbar. The PageRank in the Google Directory will show slightly lower than the PageRank in the Google Toolbar.

• Top25Web offers a free PageRank tool which extracts the PageRank of any given URL you type in. You can enter a series of pages to find out the PageRank of all of them.
• Here is another free PageRank script.
• ABC PR: ABC PR offers a free software download which extracts the checksum and Google PageRank for a given page. This software sometimes is a bit shakey, and is against Google Terms of Service.
• Web Rank Info: Web Rank Info offers a free web based PageRank estimation tool. While I am not sure how exactly they compile this data, it is rather acurate. It also approximates the PageRank out to two decimal points.
• Optilink: Optilink is link analysis software which has the ability to organize search results based on Google PageRank. Obviously this is against the Google Terms of Service, but many SEO's and professional webmasters use this software to speed up the link generation process. (cost for the full version $224)

It appears Google has gone far beyond stemming with their current algorithm update. They seem to be looking for semantic intent of the query as well as the page, and then returning a result based upon it. The resulting pages frequently may not even have the query on the page.

• If you search Google for whiplash injury (Google Search : whiplash injury) you will notice the Google results consist mostly information sites.

• If you search Google for whiplash injuries (Google Search : whiplash injuries) you will notice the Google results consist mostly of commercial sites.
• Some people (such as Peter D) are stating these updates relate to the invisible tabs idea that Danny Sullivan spoke of last year.

(original discussion in HighRankings Forums) Many local sites from Florida to Austin to NYC have taken a beating by the recent Google algorithm updates (Florida and Austin.) Is it any wonder they named these recent Google algorithm updates after locations?

Google still have some things to work out with the new algorithm though, as many search results are still a wee bit funky. If the relevancy only drops on commercial searches that is not so bad in the eyes of Google since other products such as Froogle will help in this area. Perhaps semantics are the way to separate the white pages from the yellow pages!