Google have just released it's latest ranking algorithm, which has led to a drop in rankings for many sites using long keyphrases. The update is based on a patented system which utilises more powerful computing hardware to more accurately index longer keyword phrases, when before, the process made a rough guestimation as to the relevency of the site to the longer phrases.

The problem for google is that with each increase in word count in a phrase, the number of combinations of phrases increases exponentially. If you imagine that there are 200,000 possible words for a single word keyword, then having two words in your keywords will increase that to 200k x 2 (or 200k²). Increasing that again to 3 keywords multiplies the number again by 200k so by the time you have 5 keywords in your phrase, the number of possible combinations is 200k^5, . or, if you were to write down the whole number, it is about 3 with 26 zeros after it (300 septillion in US numerical system = 300 quadrillion UK numerical system).  if you have a really long keyphrase, say 18 words, then the number of possible combinations is 5 googlplex. The actual computational power to do this is immense, and way beyond the capability of even the most powerful machines today. Therefore, there have to be some heuristics involved which can estimate relevency of long phrase keywords.

What Googles new patent does is utilise more computing power to get a better estimation of long phrase relevency. For some sites, this has meant a reported loss of 90% of their traffic. Other sites have benefited though. This site is ranked 1 for 'Lincolnshire SEO', however, before the ranking update, it was only ranked fifth for 'SEO in Lincolnshire' - due to the update, it is now ranking top for 'SEO in Lincolnshire' so it looks like the update is actually working better than the previous one. Other sites, like Dr Nick Lowe have increased traffic by 30% and the number of online orders has also expanded accordingly.

What the new update will mean for SEO practitioners is that relying on passive traffic from non targeted long tail keywords is no longer an option. If you want to rank well, you need to build your SEO based on the targeted keyphrases and be aware that high rankings for related keywords will not come easily.