Google cleaning up blogroll links.
SEO strategists out there do know that one of the classic ways of netlinking build up has been launched by blogs with their blogrolls. Evolution has it that blogrolls are now mini RSS threads not only linking to a said blog but also to a specific page and sometimes to blog post excerpts. This had the drawback, for the Google bot, of indexing excerpts more than full text. What with the increase of SPLOGS (Spam Blogs eating up content) this is a real case for concern.
Back in December 2009 2008, Google Blog Search team applied a patch to the Google bot to modify its algorithm concerning blogroll indexation. But it was still cranky. Many blogs saw their full content being indexed while others saw a huge loss in presence in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) as well as, more important, a huge fall in the number of backlinks.
In an end of March update, Jeremy Hylton of Google Blog Search announced that the patch is now up and rolling and that it will influence indexation as well as ranking.
We have launched a ranking change that reduces the number of results that are returned because of blogroll matches. There are still problems to work out, but this change appears to be a big improvement over our earlier fix. We had originally planned to launch an experiment for link: queries, but decide more recently to release this change first. We are still working on the link: change and expect to have that ready in a few more weeks.
Expect major changes in your Google index visibility (especially if it is based on blogroll links) in the coming weeks/months.
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Ah…i need to take care of my SPLOGS…Need to find ways to manipulate Google :p
Back in December 2009, eh? Those were the days.
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I wanted to know of something, do you think having such a long blogroll like mine can affect my SERP? In your opinion should I nofollow them or is it ok as it is?
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