Since October 21/22(depending where you live), a number of people discovered that their websites are no longer ranking in the first page. This sparks a lot of confusion and discussions in many webmasters/Internet Marketing forum.

Google has not said anything about algorithm changes, it has just mentioned about indexing problems which they are trying to fix. This is a very vague reply from Google.

So what exactly is happening? From what I can gather, here’s what has happened:

1) Many sites ranking in the first page has dropped to the as low as 10th page

2) Many sites ranking in the first page right now are pretty low in quality

3) Many sites ranking in the first page are non-domain name pages (ie. www.mywebsite.com/keywords-here.html)

4) It happens across-board

5) Websites that has dropped in rankings are in 100% compliance with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

6) Many believed that it is an error on Google side as they are adjustment to indexing problems

7) Others believed that Google has updated the Mayday issue and it has only been updated now

Google employees has mentioned in their webmaster forum that it is a change in algorithm, which many webmasters disagree

So what can we gather here? The best I can say is that we can only wait for the next 2-3 weeks, observe what has happened before we can come to a conclusion.

If this is really an algorithm change, I believe this is the biggest shake-up in the SEO arena.