The Inevitable Google is Updating Forum Thread

It’s spring time in the United States. Flowers are a’blooming and SEO’s are stirring about the discussion forums and pollinating threads. Forums rock, but one annoyance I have is the same topics seem to get posted over and over. This is due to the way forum software is designed–threads asking/answering the same question descend into the nether regions of unbumped posts and eventually get buried.

As sure as the seasons, every SEO knows that Google updates toolbar PageRank and backlinks about 4 times each year. It’s quite comical to observe how one person, usually a newbie, posts a new thread in the webmaster forums announcing that he is not sure, but he may have discovered a Google update is underway. Lurkers chime in, questioning, rebutting, ridiculing in prosaic banter until finally everyone agrees that a Google update has occurred. Then, there remains only one thing to be said.

“Google is updating.”

“I’m seeing changes.”

 ”Me too!”

“I don’t see anything. Wait, now I do.”

“When is the next update?”

The inevitable “Google is updating forum thread” became such an annoyance at SitePoint that the Google Forum moderator posted a sticky thread explaining the frequency of Google PR updates and warning members not to “start any new threads asking about when the next update will occur.” I checked a few forums and quickly picked out the Google update threads. Like the seasons, I doubt that this ritual will ever change.