europeforvisitors - 10:56 pm on Oct 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

Google control the statistical analysis through the algo's. One minor change and 50% of people here could be seriously affected.

Not only that, but they could be seriously affected for one keyword or keyphrase but not hurt at all for another.

Example:

One of my travel content site's major subtopics is a destination in Europe. I've built a "site within a site" around it. Last month, its index.htm page was in Google's top 10 search results; suddenly it's down in the 30s. Yet at the same time, some of my other keyphrase topics haven't slipped at all. Why? Beats me.

Fortunately, I have a large site with several thousand pages on many different subjects, so most traffic doesn't come into my site through my home page or my subtopics' index.htm pages. Users typically arrive by searching on keywords or keyphrases that are found in my articles, links pages, etc. So even if Google doesn't send much traffic to my Elbonian index.htm page, users are likely to get there by searching on "Elbonia apartment rentals," "Elbonia railroad station," "Piazza della Elbonia," etc. and clicking a navigation link to find information on other aspects of travel in Elbonia. And even if users never get to my Elbonian index.htm page, it really doesn't matter, because that index.htm page is merely one point of entry to my site.

What works for a content site like mine may not work for an e-commerce site, obviously. But for some of us, traffic on the home page--or from searches on any specific keyword--may not be that big a deal...and content diversity is one way to minimize the impact of changes in Google's algorithm from one month to the next.