Matt Cutts on Google Updates
Matt Cutts just wrote a quick little explanation of what a “real Google update” is over on his blog. Of course as with most things Matt talks about, it seems there are always differences between what the mainstream webmaster community thinks and what the people over at Google think. In my mind, what constitutes an update to most webmasters is when there is a large, across the board, change in SERP placement for many keywords/websites. This may not hold true for the true definition of what an update has been in the past. It seems to me that there are really two major kind of “updates” to webmasters. One is the type that Matt refers to and these are usually the ones that get named by people over at Webmaster World…they seem to love naming things over there. The second kind is when we see major shifts in the SERPs, but do not necessarily see them being due to an algo shift or other major tweak in the infrastructure.