Zach Milne Blog

Google’s Penguin update rolled out around April 24th or 25th with, in fact, some warning this time from Matt Cutts about a looming over optimization penalty. However, the effect was nonetheless still devastating to many webmasters and business owners which experienced dramatic drops in traffic. I’m sure you know what I’m referring to. If not, you can read about it here and here among many other places like SEO Roundtable, Search Engine Land, and others.

I think this update marks a turning point for Google about the types of actions it’s willing to take against the SEO community and businesses who wish to manipulate rankings at any level, not just web spam or link buyers. This update was NOT to improve the quality of the SERPS directly but to go after those who seek to artificially inflate rankings whether their content is worthy or not. In fact, after close inspection, you can see some pretty bad sites and content is ranking that have moved up to fill the gaps left from pages that have been pushed down. Lots of great sites have also been hit unintentionally, which causes even worse results. It’s almost as if Google is saying they hate manipulators so much they are willing to sacrifice quality results in the short term to move people in a direction that follows their guidelines.

Although I think this algorithm change was overly aggressive and will be pulled back a bit, the big G is becoming more and more willing to accept major collateral damage to keep the results as natural as possible. From here on out I think we can expect more volatile rankings as a result of the trend of more frequent algorithm changes.

It never ceases to amaze me the unique items people are interested in and that sell well online. Here are a few below from an e-commerce store of mine that was recently sold.

Brooks Ketchup – This is a brand of ketchup that was originally manufactured in the US. The manufacturing plant was moved to Canada for some reason or another. This may or may not have been the cause of major grocery store suppliers dropping the product from their inventory. Brand loyalist run after this product, not walk. I have tried it, and in my opinion, it’s better than Heinz ketchup.

Banana Ketchup – What a strange thing. Banana?! This is a sauce very popular in the Philippines. And yes, it’s yellow.

Heinz Ketchup Glass Bottles – These are way cool. Not really that unique in terms of consumption, but unique for households. Very retro. We have people all over the country order cases of this stuff. Even TV shows order them for sets.

Heinz Hot and Spicy Ketchup – For those that love a little spice in their food. It’s got great flavor.

Heinz One Carb Ketchup – This is a reduced sugar ketchup perfect for the low carbers that tastes very similar to the original. There are also other low carb ketchups.

Curry Ketchup – This stuff comes from Germany and people are crazy about it, so I had to try it. It’s actually very good. Supposedly it’s on every kitchen table in Germany (like Heinz in the United States).

There are lots of other unique, very cool, and delicious products Ketchup World carries.