A few days ago I received a request from one of my former clients: to find out why exactly the Google rankings for his site so drastically dropped and didn't come back even a month later.

I said I couldn't help, because nobody except a few people in GooglePlex knows exactly what happens to the ranking algorithm when the rankings drastically change. We SEOs can spot certain patterns and come to conclusions (which are probably, but not necessarily, true), but we can't give a site owner an accurate list of reasons for ranking drops in each particular case and say, "Just do this and the rankings will be back".

But I'm naturally curious, so I retrieved the old keyword lists from my archives (I haven't touched the site in question in months), along with the saved results of the manual rank checks I do from time to time while working on websites. A brief check showed at once that though rankings in most groups of keywords had dropped dramatically indeed, other keyword groups, on the contrary, had improved over the months. This led me to the following conclusion: the ex-client's site is not being penalised or permanently filtered out, but is suffering from yet another Florida-like update.

The "Florida" Google update (Google updates receive names according to a system very similar to the system of naming Atlantic hurricanes) struck in November 2003 (about the time I entered search engine optimisation). It dropped to the nowhere millions of sites that used to comfortably sit on the first positions for their favourite search terms. SEOs who had never seen anything of the sort before started making thousands of desperate postings on various SEO forums and blogs, and nobody knew what to do at first. Then people slowly calmed down and decided not to do anything rash, but wait and see what happens.

In January 2004, another update named Austin dropped still more sites. It looked like the second wave of Florida, but at the same time it brought certain victims of Florida back to where they used to be. A month later, the Brandy update released even more Florida-struck sites.

This happened more than three years ago. We've had more updates of a similar kind (supposedly applying new filters developed by Google engineers, testing them and then rolling back those that have proven ineffective). In October-November 2005, we had the Jagger update that went in three stages, but even more updates remained unnamed. Right now, in March-April 2007, we are having another one. It is also noticed that every update affects different niches and SERPs, in turn. So, the first advice: if your site got hit by a major Google update, don't panic or turn your site upside down.

I'm not saying don't do anything

If your site suddenly loses all the rankings, it's a good time to check how clean it is. Check and double-check your code. Even such a small thing as a questionable alt attribute or a misplaced <h1> tag can trigger a filter. Check your linking patterns and if you are heavily cross-linking 20 or 30 sites belonging to you, remove the unnecessary links and merge the sites themselves where possible. Check your outbound links for bad neighbourhoods.

If you are sure your site is clean in terms of SEO, consider moving to higher website building standards. For example, if you have been considering switching from table-based design to a table-free one, there is no reason not to do so now. You can also add more content or revise your navigation. But be careful and don't make your site worse than it was.

An aggressive link building campaign won't help, but a few new solid links you might receive from your friends are a good thing.

Your rankings will probably return slowly during the next months. If they don't, the next Google update might bring them back to you. In certain cases you will probably have to wait through two consecutive updates.

I know that it hurts when a sudden whim of the #1 search engine harms your business and reduces your income. Unfortunately, it's useless to get annoyed about it and blame (let alone sue) Google. Google owes you nothing. Another useless thing is to keep bugging your SEO consultant all through the update with endless "Why me?" or "Please do something" emails and phone calls. Even the most knowledgeable SEO expert can't stop a hurricane.