The SEO community has known for a while that something was happening behind the glass walls of Google, and earlier this week Search Engine Journal and Google confirmed the updates. Some websites have reported up to a 20-30 percent loss in organic search traffic thanks to the tweak.

Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable dubbed it the Maccabee’s Update, and discovered it focused on two ares: keyword permutations and low-quality websites with spammy ad practices (an extension of Google Fred).

We break it down further below:

What Is the Google Macabee Update?

The Google Maccabee update is a recent Google algorithm update. It’s somewhat of an extension of the Fred algorithm update, and it’s focused on user experience.

A couple years ago, SEOs wised up to the usefulness of long-tail keywords and answering questions. As in any field, when a new success tactic is discovered, black-hat professionals figure out how to manipulate it. Thus, creating low-quality web pages for similar long-tail keywords–keyword permutations–rose in prominence.

Keyword Permutations

Keyword permutations refers to multiple phrases or long-tail keywords that essentially mean the same thing. Barry Schwartz lays it out like this:

“By far, the biggest bulk of sites that I saw got hit all had tons and tons of landing pages target massive arrays of keyword permutations. So for example, if they are a travel site, they would target all the destinations they service and also add landing pages for [destination sub name] + [activity name] and sometimes even go beyond that. If they were a service business, they would target [city name] + [service A] and then [city name] + [service B] and so on.”

What was happening was SEOs and marketing managers started to create multiple pages for each of these almost-identical keyword permutations.

Here, I’ll give you an example. Let’s say I have a plumbing company, and I want to rank for “how to plunge a toilet.” Instead of making one amazing page on plunging a toilet, I make five identical pages targeting different versions of the same long-tail keyword:

• How to plunge a toilet fast
• How to plunge clogged toilet
• How to plunge toilet
• How to unclog a toilet with a plunger
• How to use a plunger

Bad news bears.

While that may have helped you rank for both key phrases, you’re creating a confusing and often irrelevant user experience. If you want to tell people how to plunge a toilet, do it—but instead of trying to rank for keywords, why not try and write the best damn blog post out there on plunging a toilet?

Google Fred Extension

Another feature of the Maccabee update is the Google Fred extension. In a nutshell:

Google Fred was a Google update that targeted black-hat tactics tied to aggressive monetization on websites. “Aggressive monetization” referred to an overload of ads, low-value content, and few user benefits. The majority of the websites affected had one (or more) of the following:

•  An extremely large presence of ads
• Content (usually in blog form) on all sorts of topics created for ranking purposes
• Content has ads or affiliate links spread throughout, and the quality of content is far below industry-specific sites
• Deceptive ads (looks like a download or play button to trick someone into clicking)
• Thin content
• UX barriers
• Mobile problems
• Aggressive affiliate setups
• Aggressive monetization

Was I Affected By the Maccabee Algorithm Change?

If you were affected you would have noticed a drop in organic search traffic, specifically a drop in search traffic from Google. If you are guilty of any of the tactics above, there’s a good chance you were.

To remedy a Google penalty, you need to fix your web pages immediately, or rethink your ad display on your website. If you aren’t sure if you were affected, give us a call and we’ll take a look.