It is that time of the month, where we give you an update on what is going on with Google in terms of SEO related updates. The last update was in July 2010 and here is our August report.

This post is always based off of a WebmasterWorld thread. This time, Tedster, the WebmasterWorld administrator, has made my life easy by summarizing the most significant discussions in the Google forum. He said there is more talk about the -950 over optimization penalty, reports of rankings going up but traffic going down, traffic cycles between poorly-targeted and well-targeted, even though the total stays level, rankings are lost after a template change, even though textual content and URLs do not change and traffic fluctuates wildly during the day, or from day to day.

Outside of those discussions, here are some of the more significant Google stories from this past month.

Webmasters Complain Over New Google Image DesignLink Update In Google Webmaster ToolsMinor Google PageRank Update : July 2010Google To Power Yahoo Japan: Here The FAQsTwitter Usernames Ranking Very Well in GoogleGoogle To Warn Webmasters Over Dramatic Site IssuesMore On Google Alerts Quality ControlGoogle Gives Dictionary.com, Answers.com, Merriam-Webster & The Free Dictionary Top Real EstateGoogle Misclassifying Some Sites As Parked Domains & Booting Them From Search Results?Interesting Comment From Google On Most Common Keywords ReportGoogle Site Speed: Two Factors, GoogleBot & UsersGoogle Showing Related Videos With Play IconsGoogle: The “Last Thing We Want” Is The “Best SEO To Win”Google Changes Maps OneBox DesignGoogle Drops Report Offensive Images From New Image SearchGoogle Changes Google News Design Based On ComplaintsYahoo Image Search Now Sending More Traffic Than Google?Google Bans AdWords Help For Cloaking, Making It Hard To Help Advertisers

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.