Google is an ever-changing, giant search engine.

Google's algorithims and rules for showing results are constantly being updated, tweaked and modified, with the aim always of trying to get the best results to you each time. Google are always looking for ways to weed out crumby sites with crappy content.

What does this mean to me?

Well if you have a website, this means that you many need to have a look at your website content. Does your website have good, relative content? Do you have strong search engine optimisation?

Synonyms

Much of Google's results are served from synonyms of the keywords you typed.

This means that your website needs to include a range of relevant words that capture the different search terms. For example if you have a website for rental cars, you will want to include terms like "hire" and "vehicle" as well.

May Day Release

Google's May Day release brought in a change in Google's algorithim that affected long-tail keyword pages.

"Long-tail keywords" are longer search terms, such as "Bed and Breakfast Accommodation Christchurch New Zealand". A "short-tail keyword" would be something like "Christchurch accommodation".

The change mostly only affected large directories and sites relying on long-tail keywords for results.

What does this mean? Well it means you may need to check the search engine optimisation on your website. Have you optimised your website for short key phrases or long key phrases?

It can be very helpful to go to Google yourself and type in a few different things to try and bring up your website. If you can't find it then you will need to tweak your optimisation.