Google algorithm update affects 35% or websites

Google announced "a significant improvement" to their ranking algorithm at the weekend.  They predict the change will affect 35% of websites.  The aim of this latest change, currently known as Google Freshness,' is to determine when to serve up 'fresh' search results for users who are looking for information on hot topics or recent events and when to present older results where they are more relevant to the users search query.

The change appears to give more weight to pages with recent timestamps. This means website owners would be well advised to re-visit the frequency of blog posts and how rss feeds are syndicated.

For more information watch Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz discussing the change with Mike King from iPullRank.