Google Algorithm Update: Feb 2012

Google reported its algorithm changes a little earlier than expected this month releasing 40 Changes for February 2012 including:

• Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
• Improved local results.  Launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably and the algorithm is better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.
• Link evaluation.  Google often uses characteristics of links to help figure out the topic of a linked page. They have changed the way in which they evaluate links; in particular, they are turning off a previous unidentified method of link analysis that was used for several years in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
• Fresher images. [launch codename “tumeric”] Google has adjusted the signals for surfacing fresh images and now can more often surface fresh images when they appear on the web.
• More locally relevant predictions in YouTube. [project codename “Suggest”]  The ranking for predictions in YouTube will now provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, it might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, it might predict [lady gaga in India].
• Spam update. In the process of investigating some potential spam, Google found and fixed some weaknesses in the spam protections.
• Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.

Of the 40 reported changes, these changes represent those more related to search results ranking factors including content freshness, location, and quality.