Google Algorithm Updates Questions

What is the Algorithm Update, What is the best source to know updates?

Google makes changes to the search algorithm to improve the quality of results. Sometimes Google implements some minor tweaks and sometimes some major updates like Penguin, Panda, Humming Bird and Payday loan update etc.

The best source to see all updates ordered by date: Moz Algorithm Updates

What is Mobile Friendly Update and when was it launched?

Mobile Friendly update was released on 21st April 2015. The major target of the update was to make the websites mobile friendly. The site which didn’t follow the guidelines of Mobile SEO were affected with the update.

How many times does Google release the algorithms and updates visible to users?

According to industry sources, Google updates their search algorithm 500 – 600 times yearly. These updates are classified as minor updates and major updates. Most of the time we get information about the major updates, which has a very significant impact on SERP’s.

What is Panda Update? 

Panda update was first released in Feb 2011 and a major purpose of this update is to penalized the website with low-quality content or duplicate or thin content which was created only for SEO purpose. In May 2014 Panda 4 was release which has hit many major brand sites like eBay, ask.com, biography.com and many other sites.

What is Penguin Update? 

Penguin update was first released in April 2012. This update targeted the websites using black hat SEO techniques and using over optimization by violating the search guidelines. Later releases of Penguin update has targeted the websites generating links from low-quality sources with keyword reach anchor text

What is Hummingbird update? 

This update was released in August 2013. The purpose of this update was to understand the intent of the user in the query and provide the results best suitable for a user. Instead of ranking a page because of keyword density, this update understands the semantics of query, relevancy of content and provide the suitable results.

For example, if you search for keyword: “which is the best business hotel in Hyderabad ?” then hummingbird will understand the intent of the user and provide the results for “best business hotel in Hyderabad” by ignoring the words [which is] and [?] to provide relevant results.

What is EMD update?

This update was released by Google in Sep 2012 to target low-quality websites which used exact match domain name sites. The major sites which hit with the update the long tail domains with keywords. Sites like www.buy-best-laptops-online.com were hit with the update. Even some good sites were hit with this update. Example www.pooltables.com has lost the 1st position after EMD Update.

If we use a keyword in domain, Will it hit with EMD filter?

If we use a keyword in the domain along with other words or brand name, we must ensure that we are providing quality of content on the site which is protected from EMD filter.

What is Pigeon Update?

Google have released this algorithm to provide more relevant results in Google Local Results. The algorithm considers other traditional web search signals as crucial factors for local ranking. This algorithm name was coined by “Search Engine Land”.

What is Pirate 2.0 Update?

This update was released to target the websites which distribute the pirated material like pirated movies, software and other copyright material. Most of the torrent sites, online movie distribution sites were hit with this update.

What is RainBrain Algorithm?

Rank Brain is an artificial intelligence (AI) software program used to help process search queries. Google announced about this update in October 2015. RankBrain uses artificial intelligence to process large amount to data and convert the data in a format which can be interpreted by Google Machine learning systems.

What is Penguin 4 Update? 

Google has made the Penguin algorithm integrated with their core algorithm and it works in real time. This announcement was made in Sep 2016 by Google. Also, this update was planned to released in Phases, So in September end and October beginning, Google launched 2 phases of this update.

Some confirmed Google Penguin SEO updates are

Penguin 1 – on April 24, 2012 (impacting around 3.1% of queries)
Penguin 2 – on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
Penguin 3 – on October 5, 2012 (impacting around 0.3% of queries)
Penguin 4 (a.k.a. Penguin 2.0)- on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
Penguin 5 (a.k.a. Penguin 2.1)- on October 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)
Penguin 6 (a.k.a. Penguin 3.0-) on October 17, 2014 (impacting less than 1% English queries). On December 1, 2014, Google confirmed that the update was still rolling out with webmasters continuing to report significant fluctuations during Google SEO updates 2014. 

Penguin 7 (a.k.a. Penguin 4.0)- on September 23, 2016

Some important Google SEO updates according to Google Panda Update are

• No Multiple Pages with the Same Keyword
• Get Rid of Auto-generated Content and Roundup/Comparison Type of Pages
• No Pages with 1-2 Paragraphs of Text Only
• No Scraped Content
• Panda Likes New Content
• Be Careful with Affiliate Links and Ads
• Too Many Outbound Links with Keywords are bad

Google Mobile-Friendly Update

Introduced On April 21, 2015, Google introduced its Mobile-Friendly search algorithm that is intended to give a lift to mobile friendly sites pages in Google’s mobile search results.

• Latest Google Mobile-Friendly SEO updates are
• Google mobile-friendly testing tool now has API access
• Google may pick desktop over AMP page for the mobile-first index
• Google begins mobile-first indexing, using mobile content for all search rankings
• Google will show AMP URLs before App deep link URLs in mobile results
• Google says page speed ranking factor to use mobile page speed for mobile sites

Top 5 resources to find latest Google SEO Updates

1) Moz

2) Search Engine Land

3) Search Engine Journal

4) Webmaster World

5) Search Engine Watch