Algorithm Updates | Eduki Wiki

Core Search Queries Up 5 Percent in October 2011

November 14, 2011 0

Google Algorithm Update: Feb 2012

February 27, 2012 0

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.

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Google Announces 30 Algo Changes

January 5, 2012 0

Google has continued its policy to update the search community on its algorithm changes. The previous search quality highlights were released on 12/1/2011 and included a quality classifier for ‘parked domains’, improvements in ‘autocomplete predictions’, and a more comprehensive index.

Today, Google anannounced 30 search quality highlights from December that include:

More relevant sitelinks. [launch codename “concepts”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] We improved our algorithm for picking sitelinks. The result is more relevant sitelinks; for example, we may show sitelinks specific to your metropolitan region, which you can control with your location setting.
More rich snippets. We improved our process for detecting sites that qualify for shopping, recipe and review rich snippets. As a result, you should start seeing more sites with rich snippets in search results.
Tweak to +1 button on results page. As part of our continued effort to deliver a beautifully simple user experience across Google products, we’ve made a subtle tweak to how the +1 button appears on the results page. Now the +1 button will only appear when you hover over a result or when the result has already been +1’d.
Upcoming events at venues. We’ve improved the recently released places panel for event venues. For major venues, we now show up to three upcoming events on the right of the page. Try it for [staples center los angeles] or [paradise rock club boston].

And most important for all those college football bowl and NFL playoff games:

Live results for NFL and college football. [project codename “Live Results”] We’ve added new live results for NFL.com and ESPN’s NCAA Football results. These results now provide the latest scores, schedules and standings for your favorite football teams.

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Google Is Getting Fresh

November 4, 2011 0

Google announced on its blog on 11/3/2011 that it will be providing fresher, newer results for certain searches. The company wrote that its ranking algorithm, which impacts about 35% of searches, has been ameliorated to provide more up-to-date relevant results for “varying degrees of freshness.” Depending on the search query, it will give more recent information more prominence.

The move comes more than a year after the search-engine leader finished a major indexing overhaul, called Caffeine, to troll the Web for fresher content. Caffeine offered 50 percent faster search results so new pages or new information on existing pages are added on the fly.

Google Fellow Amit Singhal explained “If I search for [Olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics (the only time my favorite sport, cricket, was played).”

For some searches, the fact that the fresher the results the better is obvious. For any event that is currently happening or has happened very recently you may now get results that may be minutes old, rather than days or hours.

Likewise, recurring events get the same benefit. Google exemplifies these types of searches with things like annual conferences or the presidential election. Even if a query is general, in that it doesn’t specify an edition or year, Google will try to retrieve info that is fresh.

Finally, information that changes and updates frequently will get better search results with the new update. If you’re looking for a product comparison, or shopping advice, you want stuff that is relevant now, not months ago.

Overall, Google search results should now contain fresher information. However, Google still has no deal with Twitter and likely no intention of striking one, so the very freshest info is unavailable in Google search results, until it hits news sites, blogs and so on. Google claims that freshness won’t be the only component as the content itself, topicality and quality will also be taken into account.

A few take-aways from this announcement include:

Content marketing is becoming more important than ever, check out this infographic on Why Content for SEO and today’s content much be unique, relevant, and fresh!
Google will show searchers more recent content and timely production is more important than ever. Google relies on websites and blogs to compete with Twitter and needs information to be curated and published quickly so that the search results are both relevant and fresh.
Old content needs updated. Recycle older content as Google has indicated more recent content will be preferred as changes happen and Google could give more preference to ‘fresher’ content.
It will be interesting to see how the SERPs can be gamed by ‘freshness’. Some website owners are going to aggressively chase headlines and current events to win top rankings. This means that fast production of content ‘on the fly’ is now as important (or even more important) than the large scale production of content.

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Google Panda 2.5 Release

October 3, 2011 0

Google Panda 2.5.2

October 17, 2011 0

Google Panda 3.2 Update Confirmed

January 26, 2012 0

Google Panda 3.5 and Webspam Update Confirmed

April 26, 2012 0

Google has rolled out a new release of its’ search algorithm dubbed the “Webspam Update” on April 25th, 2012. Google Webmaster Central says the change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s quality guidelines. The update has drawn mixed reviews from users and Google has sent webmasters some mixed signals about search engine optimization. They recently shared some SEO DOs and DON’Ts, specifically talking about some white hat things webmasters can do to help Google rank their content better.

Cutts specifically noted that websites likely to lose rankings are those that practice keyword stuffing and sites that have “unusual linking patterns,” such as links from spun content with anchor text that is completely unrelated to the actual on-page content. Additionally, Cutts emphasized the importance of creating great websites filled with high-quality, compelling content that provide a good user experience. Google’s guidance on high-quality content consists of these 23 questions you should ask yourself when evaluating website content.

According to Danny Sullivan in this Search Engine Land article, Matt Cutts ALSO CONFIRMED that a Google Panda Update hit around April 19, 2012. The last update was Panda 3.4 on March 23, which Google had publicly shared.

Hey Danny, there’s a pretty big flaw with this “winner/loser” data. Searchmetrics says that they’re comparing by looking at rankings from a week ago. We rolled out a Panda data refresh several days ago. Because of the one week window, the Searchmetrics data include not only drops because of the webspam algorithm update but also Panda-related drops. In fact, when our engineers looked at Searchmetrics’ list of 50 sites that dropped, we only saw 2-3 sites that were affected in any way by the webspam algorithm update. I wouldn’t take the Searchmetrics list as indicative of the sites that were affected by the webspam algorithm update.

 

Google continues to favor branded websites, and early reports seem to indicate that those with a good link profile have survived this storm, according to this Search Engine Watch article. This update shouldn’t be too shocking considering Google has been deindexing blog networks and flagging “unnatural” links.. And because of these link evaluation changes, negative SEO, where a competitor buys bad links and aims them at competitors website to harm them, has become a big concern for many people.

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Google Panda 3.6 Update

May 4, 2012 0

Google Restricting Search Query Information

October 20, 2011 0

Google announced that it is going to begin encrypting search queries with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) as the default experience at Google.com when you search logged into your Google account. http://www.google.com will become https://www.google.com.

What does this mean?

When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google “organic” search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site.

Matt Cutts has been quoted that this will affect single digit percentages of logged in searchers, but this is expected to be a higher figure for searches as you might expect logged in users to be more advanced or loyal users.

This figure is only going to go up as Google pushes G+. It’s reasonable to assume that as more people sign up for accounts, they’ll stay logged in to Google forever, pushing the percentage who are affected higher.

Is this bad for SEO?

What we all need to remember is that when Google updates their algorithm, the way they manage data, or the way they do business, it doesn’t mean that SEO is dead. It means that SEO is evolving. This will absolutely make reporting on keyword traffic and conversions more difficult.

For some time, Google Webmaster Central has allowed sites to discover the terms that people are using to reach their web sites. Google Webmaster Central shows the top 1,000 queries that a site appeared for at Google — as well as was selected for — over a 30-day period, and that you can even pick any particular day over that period for downloading.

This will continue to be offered, and that will remain a welcome alternative to the loss of referrer data. Maybe this is why Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics were recently integrated.

Reaction

The reaction by the industry has been very negative so far and this may cause Google to re-consider this new policy, but a complete roll-back is unlikely. The best case outcome is that Google figures out a way to provide this data inside of Google Analytics while still protecting the privacy of its users as they are doing with Adwords and Paid Search advertising. Watch for a response from Google or Matt Cutts in the next few days and check your Analytics programs to see the initial effects of this policy change.

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