Learn Digital Marketing - 16. Google Algorithm
The Google algorithm is updated thousands of times a year. Google algorithm updates are usually minor and unnoticed, but there is at least one major update per year that changes the ranking and display of websites in the search engine results.
A list of every Google algorithm update that has changed search significantly at the time or still matters to search today was compiled by us. We discussed Google algorithm updates in detail in our guide.
We'll discuss what a core update is, who is affected when an algorithm update occurs, how to prepare for future updates, and what the most significant algorithm updates have been during the past two decades.
What Is A Google Algorithm Update?
It is important to understand that Google algorithm updates can be small and go unnoticed, or they can be major and impact your rankings overnight. So why does Google have to update its algorithm?
Why Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Because of the accuracy of Google's search results and its features, it has become the most popular search engine worldwide since 1998.
Results are chosen according to factors in Google's search algorithm, which determines what a searcher is seeking based on a complex set of computer programs.
Search engine giant Google must update and improve its algorithm regularly in order to provide its users with the best and most accurate results. These updates are known as Google algorithm updates.
Previous algorithm updates have changed the way that Google:
What Is A Google Core Update?
Core updates are significant algorithm changes launched by Google that affect search results in a significant way.
Google core algorithm updates affect Websites on different platforms and in different industries. Regardless of whether you have SEOs on staff or not, Google core algorithm updates can negatively or positively affect your website.
The Most Important Google Algorithm Updates Of all time
Florida Update — November 16, 2003
Google's very first algorithm update ever happened on November 3, 2003, and it changed the face of search forever.
There was an impact on retail sites in particular, including hotels, clothing, jewellery, and businesses ranking for a great number of highly commercial terms with high search volume. This was referred to as the Florida update because of its hurricane-like way of affecting search results.
There is one thing that all of these sites have in common: they are all using keyword tactics that we think of now as spammy. It is evident that the sites in question have used keyword stuffing, which includes repeated keywords everywhere and as many times as possible, including in-text colours that match the background.
Within days of the Florida update, rankings for these sites plummeted. Smaller sites that didn't use the same spammy keywords did better in the search engine rankings than they did.
Summary: Florida updated the program to penalised sites that use spammy tactics such as keyword stuffing, invisible text, and hidden links.
Jagger Update — September and October 2005
Google updated its algorithm sometime in October 2005, after starting to roll it out in September 2005.
As The Rolling Stones were performing in Las Vegas at the time, the Jagger update was named informally by the search community. Initially, it affected only newly launched websites, which led people to believe that Google preferred well-established and better-known brands.
There were some websites who did not benefit from the Jagger update, however, due to their size or age. Spammy backlinks were the "black-hat" SEO tactics of the time addressed in this update.
Backlinks from spammy-looking pages and sudden spikes in backlink profiles were among the challenges the Jagger update brought to the sites.
Summary: Backlink spam was targeted through the Jagger update, which penalised sites that bought massive amounts of links, had duplicate content across multiple domains, and had links from known link farms.
Big Daddy Update — March 29, 2006
Matt Cutts, the head of Google's spam team, did something unprecedented in December 2005. It is his responsibility to announce the next major Google algorithm update.
Matthew Cutts wrote both an announcement and a request for SEOs to test the new update. From January 2006 to March 2006, the update was called Big Daddy by a search engine optimization specialist and approved by Google.
In our last update, Jagger, we addressed spam links. The Big Daddy update continues that work.
To improve the quality of Google's search results, BigDaddy penalised sites with low-quality inbound and outbound links. New domains and unnatural link building signals were among the most affected.
Summary: Google penalise sites with spammy backlink practises, such as reciprocal links and buying links, as part of the Big Daddy update.
Vince Update — January 18, 2009
In early 2009, search results around the world began to show the effects of Google's next big algorithm update.
A few weeks earlier, Google announced an update named Vince after a Google engineer. It was aimed at large companies with offline operations.
Brands began ranking for high-volume, competitive, and commercial keywords such as "mobile phone" and "printer" despite not always following SEO best practises.
Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO at the time, explained that the Vince update changed the relationship between brands and users - "Brands are the solution, not the problem.". "Brands remove the scum from the pond."
Summary: The Vince update expanded on the issue of trust in search results by giving an advantage to big brands.
May Day Update — April 28, 2010
The next major Google algorithm update occurred right before May Day in 2010. A full rollout was completed by May 3, 2010, hence its name.
Although Google did not officially announce the May Day update, it claimed afterward that it was about improving search results. This update excluded long-tail keywords, particularly those affecting large businesses.
Targeting long-tail keywords has been and continues to be the most successful strategy. Because they knew long-tail keywords were more likely to convert from traffic, they dominated the search results for them.
All of this changed with the May Day update. Search engines now favour original and valuable content over the size of your business when determining rankings for long-tail keywords.
Summary: The May Day update improved the quality of search results for long-tail keywords, penalising pages with duplicate or poor content.
Caffeine Update — June 8, 2010
The next big Google update came in June 2010, but because it was so significant, SEO professionals were able to test it well before it was released.
Due to its emphasis on speed and recency, this update was named Caffeine. However, the update did not directly impact many websites since it was more of an indexing change rather than an algorithm change.
Google is now able to discover and rank fresh content within seconds thanks to how it crawls and indexes websites. Afterward, Google says that you can now find links to relevant content much sooner now that it has 50 percent more fresh results for web searches compared to its last index.
Summary: The Caffeine update was all about providing the most up-to-date information by changing how Google found and stored data from websites.
Panda Update — August 12, 2011
There were some negative effects and positive ones associated with last year's Caffeine update. Its speed has led to a flood of low-quality content and content farms, thanks to caffeine's impact on Google's algorithm. As a result of the update, Google released a fix for the issue in August 2011.
An update named Panda was released to combat the deteriorating search results quality caused by Google's Caffeine upgrade. It was named for Navneet Panda, another Googler.
Whole websites were affected, not individual pages. Affected websites had low or bad backlink profiles, and their content was duplicate and thin.
Panda also marked the first time Google penalise sites that had a high bounce rate and repeated ads across pages with Google penalising sites that had high bounce rates, repetitious ads and a large number of on-site ads.
Summary: By penalising sites with repetitive content and poor metrics, the Panda update was intended to improve search results.
Penguin Update — April 24, 2012
The next major Google update was released in 2012, first dubbed the webspam algorithm update. However, the update done through Panda has implications for SEO.
Google's webspam team head Matt Cutts later renamed it the Penguin Update. As an update, its former name was more appropriate.
Attempts to combat webspam were made with the Penguin update. By penalising sites that built links using black-hat techniques, it undermined efforts to manipulate rankings.
When linking to a domain that is relevant or of high quality, black-hat link building includes earning links from anywhere and everywhere. Having low-quality links pointing to a site negatively affected its ranking in Penguin.
Summary: Penalising black-hat link building techniques was part of the Penguin update, which targeted low-quality results.
Hummingbird Update — September 26, 2013
Since Caffeine, the newest indexing change from Google revamped search in 2013. Google coined the name Hummingbird to describe this algorithm because it was efficient and precise.
After the Hummingbird update, Google's search engine began to understand queries more accurately. Google was able to understand search intent through Hummingbird and provide more relevant results to the user.
LSI, co-occurring terms, and synonyms were used in natural language processing (NLP). Despite this, Google's algorithm still relies heavily on them today.
Due to this change, the way that pages ranked and the keywords that they ranked for changed drastically. According to software engineer Amit Singhal, Google's Hummingbird algorithm not only optimises complex queries, but also affects 90% of searches worldwide right now.
Summary: Google's Hummingbird update improved how it understands search queries and search intent to give users more relevant search results.
Mobilegeddon Update — April 21, 2015
Google's next major algorithm update was released in Spring 2015. The Google Webmaster Blog announced this update in February 2015, giving web admins and SEOs two months' notice.
Google's answer to the explosion of mobile searches was called Mobilegeddon, or Mobile-friendly Ranking Factor Update. Google has begun considering the mobile-friendliness of websites for the first time.
A website that used flash, small text, or clickable elements that were too close to each other, or that didn't adjust to different screen sizes was penalised. Sites that were mobile-friendly and responsive were given preference in search results. Rankings continue to adhere to this rule.
Summary: Search engines decided to prioritise mobile-friendly sites when ranking websites during the Mobilegeddon update.
RankBrain Update — October 26, 2015
The Hummingbird algorithm was tweaked by Google later in 2015.
The Hummingbird search engine analyzes search intent using RankBrain, a machine learning system. Search results can now be tailored based on a searcher's search history and implied words, thereby providing more relevant results for a searcher.
It had the greatest impact on pages lacking context or using unrelated terms.
To analyse the pages that were ranking for their desired terms, SEOs and webmasters started using tools that allowed them to look at what words were used and how often. We do this today too.
Summary: It has been updated to take language and personal search history into account when determining Google's understanding of search intent.
Medic Update — August 1, 2018
In 2018, thousands of websites were affected by a surprise Google update that incorporated new ranking factors taken from Google's Quality Rater Guidelines document.
Medical websites and other sites that impact life-altering decisions are affected by the Medic update. Due to the potential effect they could have on either your health or money, these websites were called Your Money or Your Life (YMYL).
Websites and pages in either of these categories were penalised, especially those that lacked substantiation for their medical claims or advice. If the website had no Expertise, Authority, or Trust signals (E-A-T), it was dropped further down the rankings.
Websites that were hit the hardest included sites that sell vitamin supplements, but do not have any medical studies to support their claims (expertise) or any affiliations with regulatory agencies (authority).
Summary: Its aim was to provide money and health searchers with trustworthy results and advice by penalising websites that lack Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
BERT Update — October 22, 2019
Google's Hummingbird algorithm underwent one of its most fundamental changes in October 2019.
Google's BERT Update improved its natural language processing technology in order to better understand search intent following the Hummingbird and RankBrain updates. Words used on web pages and in search query terms are now recognized by Google with greater nuance.
It refers to the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, which first appeared in the Hummingbird update and essentially relates to natural language processing.
However, BETR has changed how SEOs, marketers, and publishers create content, despite the initial impact on websites being minimal. Content that is well written has a higher chance of ranking rather than content that is not optimised for search engines.
Summary: Google's BERT update is another way to reward well-constructed content with regard to search intent.
Google January 2020 Core Update — January 13, 2020
In the morning of January 13th, Google preannounced its January 2020 Core update and rolled it out that afternoon. It wasn't immediately clear what the update was about since Google's only recommendation was "create content users will love on your website."
Those with a less trusting and credible backlink profile were penalised the most, as it primarily affected those in the health and finance sectors. As an extension of the Medic update two years ago, the new update was about domain level trust.
Summary: By penalising sites with low levels of credibility in the YMYL categories in January 2020, the Core Update extended the Medic update.
Google May 2020 Core Update — May 4, 2020
On the day that the 2020 second update was released, it was officially announced.
It was another Medic and E-A-T-related core update in May 2020. Content and brand factors were given more weight, along with user data.
The result was that large companies benefited from the update, but sites in the YMYL categories that provided potentially unreliable financial or health information suffered.
Summary: In the Core Update for May 2020, E-A-T signals were once again the focus with a heavier weighting placed on user data and content factors.
Google December 2020 Core Update — December 3, 2020
As a gift from Google, Google released its third major update of 2020 early. It took around a week to fully implement the program, which began on December 3rd.
Many websites were not affected by the Google Core update of December 2020, but those that were may have noticed significant changes. In light of passage indexing's release so soon after the event, it seems to have focused on content interpretation and search intent.
Nevertheless, the update mostly affected reference and news websites, which became more visible on SERPs. There were also some small retail sites that initially suffered, but quickly recovered.
Summary: There is some ambiguity in the December 2020 Core Update, but it is mainly about content interpretation and SERP features.
Have You Been Affected By An Algorithm Update?
Search results volatility is constantly assessed both for desktop and mobile by the Sensor Tool. Having a high level of volatility will indicate that search results have changed in 20+ categories, which suggests Google update.
You can analyse three aspects of your site's organic performance with data sources to determine whether it has been affected by any of these major algorithm updates:
Google Analytics and Google Search Console can both provide you with historical data. Using these tools will give you insight into whether you were affected by a disaster and the impact it had on you.
Past disasters are available from 2012 onwards. Rather, you will only be able to see data from the point you have set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Thus, it will be necessary for you to set up both of these tools to track data, and you will not be able to see historical data. Nevertheless, your ability to determine whether you have been affected by a Google algorithm update is aided by all of these tools.
Here are some steps to take:
Check Your Organic Traffic
During the time when the algorithm was updated, you should check your website's traffic level. Organic traffic to your website will drop if you have been affected, or increase if you have been affected.
Just be sure to look at the traffic that comes from organic search. Other sources of traffic such as social media and email will not be affected by a Google algorithm change.
Check Your Ranking
Your ranking data around the time of the algorithm update is the next thing you should look at. A change in the ranking of your website's keywords may occur if you have been affected by an update.
In Google Search Console, you can find your average rank to determine your ranking. If you have priority keywords that drive most of your business.
Position Tracking, SERP Features, and more will be easy to monitor if you have been using it.
Check Your Impressions
In addition to checking your impressions, you can see if you've been affected by an algorithm change.
The number of impressions on your website is likely to change after an update. Search result impressions are the number of times a searcher sees your result, regardless of whether he clicks on it.
Google Search Console can be used to track impressions. With Search Console you can find out how many impressions occurred for a specific period of time or how many impressions were generated for certain keywords or pages. In the event that impressions are changing, you can find out where the difference came from.
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