I’ve previously highlighted that Google are making changes colloquially referred to as “Big Daddy” – and that further changes were in the pipeline.

The last few weeks it has become apparent that there has been a lot of Google inconsistencies, some sites are reporting 99% plus of their pages disappearing from Google’s index.

Google as ever is not publicly saying anything, however, our opinion is that Google implemented some new methods to rank websites and in the process, were too aggressive in deleting sites and are having to rebuild large parts of there index. We have noticed a lot more activity by Google in scanning sites, which lends weight to this hypothesis.

We have been very active in making changes and finding workarounds – whilst not overnight solutions we have had some good success in making sure pages are exposed in Google’s index.

More positively, whilst some sites may have lost some of their exposure, others have gained ranking. Also, due to the performance issues of Google, other search engine have benefited (Yahoo!, MSN, ASK etc.), with more searchers using these search engines. This is a positive trend, as it maintains pressure on Google to straighten out their problems and with a greater spread of searches across the different engines, your website is less reliant on one source of traffic.

One trend we have noticed with Yahoo! and MSN is that they are far quicker than Google to index pages. With searchers wanting to access up to date information, such as news, these engines are going to gain a march on Google!

In a previous post Big Daddy Arrives I mentioned that there may be future changes to Google.

And Boy it looks like there has been!

After Big Daddy was finished around the start of April, people started reporting major problems, some sites were reporting 99% plus of there pages disappearing from Google’s index.

I have seen problems fist hand with client sites losing a lot of Google exposure, resulting in a loss of business.

The problems may be related to other issues. Google’s CEO recently admitted that some of there machines were full “We have a huge machine crisis” (view comment).

So there maybe undisclosed problems with the computers that Google uses to provide its service – though with the amount of cash that Google generates, one does have to question why they are in that situation.

It could be a separate issue, that there was a momentous foul-up in the roll out of the new algorithms, that had unintended consequences.

The widespread concern with the SEO community has been noticed by more main stream press, with the Register doing an article last Thursday.

There are steps you can take to help protect your situation, we have been very active in making changes and working on our clients’ sites – whist not an overnight solution we have had some success in making sure their pages are exposed in Google’s index.

I’ll comment more on what we are doing to resolve the Google issues once are tests have been fully processed.