I’m not sure if this post relates to a flaw in the Jagger update or perhaps just an anomaly. This post is correct at the time of writing, Google will most likely remove the listing as soon as they pick up on it. For those of you who think I’m speaking about Mick Jagger, let me explain :-).
Jagger is the name given to the latest update that Google has performed on it’s index (it’s collection of webpages that it has visited). Google tends to update the results daily with small, minor updates, but 2-3 times a year, Google performs a major update on it’s index, changing ranking algorithms and including sites previously not listed on Google. The naming convention was derived from a WebmasterWorld forum discussion, where the updates were compared to hurricanes, and the naming convention has since been similar to the way that hurricanes are named. The effects of an update are usually catastrophic to many websites, and many are still painfully trying to crawl up the rankings since the Florida update of 2003.
Anyways, let me cut to the chase. So I decided that I wanted to buy a Texas Holdem Poker table for my house, and I set out to do some research on it. What’s the first thing that presumably I (or any similar customer) would search for? You got it; “Poker Table” on Google…
The SERP results look fine, and I proceed to the first listing, PokerProducts.com (which I’m not going to link to, and you will soon see why). So the landing page of the site is pretty innocuous, but something just didn’t look right, so just before I clicked the “Enter our Site” link, I decided to do a “Control+A” and scroll down on that site, try it and you’ll see what I mean.
This is the worst example of Keyword Stuffing & Invisible Text that I have seen reach a #1 position on a very popular keyword, in recent years. According to Overture, “Poker Table” received 108955 searches last month - that’s a serious amount of traffic for an amateur SEO spammer employing the blackest of black tactics. I even counted over 75 outgoing links on the landing page. If this is not amateur black hat, then what is?
Is this an anomaly or does this happen more often than I think? I’m also not sure if something in Jagger is broken? Any comments?
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