The Florida update is the SEO industry’s name for a major change in Google’s ranking that began on November 16, 2003. The name is unofficial and does not come from a Google announcement. According to Search Engine Journal, the start coincided with the Pubcon Florida conference. The term is historical.
At a glance
- Started
- November 16, 2003 (according to reports)
- Type
- Industry name for a ranking shake-up
- Affects
- Sites using keyword stuffing, doorway pages and artificial link structures (according to reports)
- Confirmed by
- no, according to reports only; the name does not come from Google
Last checked:
What happened in November 2003?
According to reports, many sites lost their rankings within days. Small retailers and affiliates were among those affected just before the Christmas shopping season, and StepForth says travel and real estate sites were hit particularly hard. According to StepForth, Google engineer Craig Nevill-Manning apologized publicly for the upheaval.
What did it change for SEO?
Google never described the change in detail. According to industry reports, keyword stuffing, doorway pages and artificial link structures lost effect. Link analysis was a popular theory for the cause, but it is not confirmed.
What applies today?
Google’s spam policies list keyword stuffing as a violation, for example blocks of text that list cities and regions a page tries to rank for, or text that repeats words unnaturally. Sites that violate the policies may rank lower or not appear at all.
Example
A page for “hotel Berlin” that repeats those words dozens of times in body text, hidden paragraphs and link texts could work before 2003. According to industry observations, this approach lost its effect with Florida.
Sources
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