There's no way around it: Viagra is one of the most competitive keywords for search engine optimization. That's why, when Google rolled out a new algorithm meant to yield more relevant search results by penalizing over-optimization, bloggers used the V-word to test it out. The results were not impressive. Or, at least, mixed.
This particular update went after, among other things, "exact match domains" - domains that are identical with the keyword or words. Which meant that Pfizer's official site for the drug, Viagra.com, actually dropped in the search rankings. Meanwhile, a lot of really sketchy stuff started floating to the top - unrelated sites that had obviously been hacked.
The website of Lois Lowry, children's literature author, is currently still on the page-one results for Viagra - with a warning from Google that the site "may be compromised". No kidding. Unless Ms. Lowry has switched careers and is now a pharmaceutical rep, that site has no business being in those search results anywhere.
The general consensus, among users and webmasters alike, is that this update didn't work so well, and actually worsened search results in some cases, with legitimate websites taking hits in their rankings. But Google is continually tweaking, so no doubt it will take that feedback and use it to adjust its next algorithm in the war against webspam. Unfortunately, in the battle between black hat SEO and Google, there always seems to be some collateral damage.
