Google unleashed its latest global algorithm shift overnight, sending the SEO world into chaos yet again.
Codenamed Parrot, Google’s latest move is the first to take site aesthetics into account, punishing the lack of animated GIFs and boring color schemes – going so far as to cast judgment on websites via alert messages in Webmaster Tools.
“Look, mate, I know a dead website when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now,” read one urgent alert found in an unfortunate brand’s Google Webmaster account this morning, which suggested setting music to automatically play as soon as a site loads as a remedy, with the song selection to be included as part of the site’s reconsideration request.
“Lovely Plumage,” read another message, apparently in praise of the site’s five shades of neon green found on its homepage. Geocities and still-indexed versions of old Myspace pages appear to be the greatest beneficiaries, with pages from the two domains ranking #1 and #2 interchangeably for nearly every search term entered.
When asked for comment, Matt Cutts of Google was heard to reply that the way SEO has been done in the past would be changing radically as a result.
“The SEO of yesterday is no more. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker. It has shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the choir invisible.”
The move has stirred controversy, even within Google.
“We really had a good thing going with black and white animals, you know?” an anonymous Google Webspam Team member grumbled, in an exclusive interview with iProspect. “First we had Panda, then Penguin. We had the rumor mill going that Zebra was going to be next in line. Then some wise guy had to step up and say ‘Why not Hummingbird?’ this last time around.”
“Ever since then, colorful birds and ‘pining for the fjords’ is all anyone ever wants to talk about around here. Not that they weren’t already, but it’s just super bad now.”
The effects of the Parrot algorithm shift appear to differ from country to country. While iProspect is gathering intelligence for a full strategic response for its US-based clients, yelling at the screen and shaking your monitor has proven to be effective so far.
On a final note, we suggest embedding this video on your homepage seems to be positively correlated with higher rankings as a result of the Parrot algorithm update.
