It seems to me that some of the "old pros" who were dropped in the Florida update are back in this update. ...at least for the areas I've been watching and am familiar with. The Florida update seemed a little harsh for people who had optimized sites even though they were within the Google guidelines. I have personally benefited from this update... the Florida update killed me.

From looking at the SERPS for some of the keywords related to sites I am working on, it appears that nothing beats lots of good content that changes frequently. Some of the sites that I let stagnate over the past few months are not doing so well while the ones with fresh content seem to be doing much better. I'm also noticing that pages that are linked from the home page are ranking incredibly well.

Check this one out:

go to the new google at http://64.233.161.105/
search for "wood blinds" the first result is mine "wbsfactory.com". This site has been around for years and used to be number one all over Google until the summer of '02.

On that site all the products are listed on the left column. Search for each of the product names on the new google. "1" Wood Blinds", "2" Premium Faux", etc., etc. ...they are almost all number one positions. Here's the pattern: The link text from the home page, the title, and the first heading in the content section of the page are all the same. I've noticed this same pattern for some other sites in different industries as well.

Sorry to write such a long post. I'm just amazed at how simplicity seems to be winning. Maybe Google figured out how to stop cheaters and over-optimizers in the Florida update and just had to turn it down a little this time around to keep from hurting honest sites that are optimized fairly.