Latest Google Algorithms
Latest Google Algorithms Every SEO Specialist should be familiar with
Google It!
Google has been so much into our lives that it’s now officially a verb on dictionaries. We use Google to find information about many things from how to tie a tie, stores in our area to how does a centrifuge work. To look for the news, articles, music, pictures and almost anything that occurs to mind. But how does it search for what we need? How does it rank websites? Why some sites are shown as the first result?
Google has some methods of its own to rank websites and to differ good ones from bad ones. This article aims to talk about the algorithms used by Google to rank websites and it is compiled by two SEO Specialists working in Touska company. When it comes to search engines and rankings, the term SEO is seen everywhere.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of getting traffic from search results on search engines. It is a methodology of strategies, techniques, and tactics used to increase the number of visitors (traffic) to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines.
It does matter for a company that produces sports shoes to be ranked on the first page when someone searches for “sports shoes”. Such companies hire SEO Specialists to help them get to the first page. SEO Experts need to understand how search engines work in order to be capable of accomplishing their tasks.
There are many search engines but this article goes with Google as it is the most popular. One of the most important concepts every SEO Specialist must be familiar with is “Search Engine Algorithms”. That is how they figure the way google ranks websites and that is how they can take action.
What are Google Algorithms?
Firstly, let’s see what an algorithm is:
Longman defines it as “a set of instructions that are followed in a fixed order and used for solving a mathematical problem, making a computer program, etc.”
Oxford defines it as “a set of rules that must be followed when solving a particular problem”
But In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is a finite sequence of well-defined, computer-implementable instructions, typically to solve a class of problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are unambiguous specifications for performing calculations, data processing, automated reasoning, and other tasks.
Google’s Algorithms are a complex system used to retrieve data from its search index and instantly deliver the best possible results for a query. The search engine uses a combination of algorithms and numerous ranking signals to deliver webpages ranked by relevance on its Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). There are many google algorithm updates. Here you can see a brief timeline of some of these algorithms:
Panda, Pigeon, and Penguin
Some of these algorithms brought major changes, in this article we examine three Ps, Panda, Pigeon and Penguin.
Google Panda
What is Google Panda?
In 2010, the falling quality of Google’s search results and the rise of the “content farm” business model became a subject that was repeatedly making the rounds and user complaints the increasing influence of “content farms” were growing rampant.
On or around February 23, 2011, Google made a major update to their algorithm dubbed “Panda” by some and “Farmer” by others. According to Google, the update impacted roughly 12 percent of the organic search results, and the goal was to elevate high-quality sites and web pages to the top of the organic search results while lowering, or penalizing, the rank of lower-quality or “thin’ web sites and pages, particularly those sites that display a large amount of advertising without much in terms of high-quality content. Panda is updated from time-to-time. When this happens, sites previously hit may escape, if they’ve made the right changes. Panda may also catch sites that escaped before.
Panda marked the beginning of Google’s war against web spam and “black hat” SEO and it remains one of the most notorious updates in the search giant’s history.
How does Google Panda work?
Google Panda aims to reward quality content and prevent low-quality or deceptive content from showing in the SERPs. Of course, algorithmically measuring the “quality” of content is difficult, but Google managed to pinpoint a number of issues that suggests content shouldn’t rank in high positions:
Thin content — Weak pages with very little relevant or substantive text and resources, such as a set of pages describing a variety of health conditions with only a few sentences present on each page. Also, Pages with very little content or technical issues preventing Google’s bots from seeing content (e.g. hidden content, dynamic content, etc.).
Duplicate content — Copied content that appears on the Internet in more than one place. Duplicate content issues can also happen on your own website when you have multiple pages featuring the same text with little or no variation. For example, a chimney sweep company might create 10 pages, one for each city the business serves, with content that is nearly identical on all of the pages with only the city names swapped out (e.g. “We clean chimneys in Denver” on one page and “We clean chimneys in Boulder” on the next, and “We clean chimneys in Aspen” on the next).
Low-quality content — Pages that provide little value to human readers because they lack in-depth information.
Excessive user-generated content (UGC):user-generated content (UGC) in itself isn’t a problem, it needs to be relevant to the topics covered in your domain/pages while adding value to the overall experience.
Low-quality user-generated content (UGC) — An example of this type of low-value User Generated Content would be a blog that publishes guest blog posts that are short, full of spelling and grammatical errors and lacking in authoritative information.
Lack of authority/trustworthiness — Content produced by sources that are not considered definitive or verified. A Google rep stated that sites aiming to avoid Panda’s impact should work to become recognized as authorities on their topic and entities to which a human user would feel comfortable giving their credit card information.
Content farming — Large numbers of low-quality pages, often aggregated from other websites or websites that publish high volumes of low-quality content, often taking content from elsewhere on the web to cover a vast variety of search engine queries, produce a body of content that lacks authority and value to readers because its core purpose is simply to gain search engine rankings for every conceivable term.
Low-quality content surrounding affiliate links — Poor content around links pointing to paid affiliate programs
Excessive affiliate links: Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with affiliate links or affiliate websites, but your content must have something to offer besides promotional links
High ad-to-content ratio — Pages made up mostly of paid advertising rather than original content.
Websites blocked by users — Sites that human users are either blocking directly in the search engine results or by using a Chrome browser extension to do so, indicating low quality.
Content mismatching search query/ irrelevant content: — Content that doesn’t match the keywords, titles and other elements you’re optimizing for or pages that “promise” to deliver relevant answers if clicked on in the search results, but then fail to do so. For example, a website page might be titled “Coupons for Whole Foods,” but when clicked on, there might be no coupons or there might just be a page of ads, leading to disappointment.
Keyword stuffing: or hiding keywords within content in order to boost search ranking.
Deceptive content: Content designed to deceive users — for example, making ads look like regular content in order to generate more clicks.
Deceptive links: Links that don’t take users to the promised location.
Some concepts will be explained in detail in the next part, Google Penguin.
Google Penguin
What is Google Penguin?
One of the biggest talking points among SEO consultants have to be Google’s constant barrage of animal updates. Among these, its Penguin updates have arguably had the most impact on the industry. Google Penguin aims to remove sites from the search results that have been trying to game Google by buying or otherwise “unnaturally acquiring” links to their website. It does that by basically applying a negative value to specific links.
Google Penguin is a codename for a Google algorithm update that was aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now declared black-hat SEO techniques involved in increasing artificially the ranking of a webpage by manipulating the number of links pointing to the page.
The first Google Penguin update was rolled out on April 24, 2012. It is also known as Penguin 1.0. Two data refreshes took place late that year. Here it was not the algorithm itself that was updated, but only the database required for it.
On May 22, 2013, the second Penguin update took place in Penguin 2.0. Almost four months later Google once again carried out another data refresh.
On October 17, 2014, Google began the Penguin 3.0 update. Until then all updates were manually executed.
With the experience of the Penguin 4.0 update in the Fall of 2016, the update became a part of the so-called Google core algorithm.
Since it first waddled into view, the Penguin updates have completely changed the SEO landscape. As Google Penguin is no longer separate from the Google core algorithm, we will not see any other Google Penguin updates. It has made link-building, so important to SEO, more complex.
How does Real-Time Google Penguin work?
Your website can trigger a Google Penguin filter any day if you have unnatural links. That’s why you need to keep an eye on your backlink profile and run a Link Detox report at least once a week if not more often. If you’re penalized by Google Penguin now and take the time to improve your website, Google will take all that work into consideration much faster, no need to wait for a Penguin refresh.
The work you put into analyzing your bad links and cleaning up your backlink profile will not go unnoticed by Google. According to their announcement on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, they will see your links shortly after re-crawl or re-index.
Why Google Penguin Was Needed
Websites that do not adhere to the webmaster guidelines of Google are affected by the Penguin update. Google’s war on low-quality started with the Panda algorithm, and Penguin was an extension and addition to the arsenal to fight this war.
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Penguin was Google’s response to the increasing practice of manipulating search results (and rankings) through black hat link building techniques. The algorithm’s objective was to gain greater control over and reduce the effectiveness of, a number of black-hat spamming techniques.
By better understanding and process the types of links websites and webmasters were earning, Penguin worked toward ensuring that natural, authoritative and relevant links rewarded the websites they pointed to, while manipulative and spammy links were downgraded. Penguin only deals with a site’s incoming links. Google only looks at the links pointing to the site in question and does not look at the outgoing links at all from that site.
What webspam does the Penguin update fight?
According to the Google Quality Guidelines, webspam exists in many different forms. According to it, the following techniques or features are considered webspam:
Unnatural links: These backlinks can, for example, be generated by link purchase or link rent from link farms.
Artificial linking: If mainly keyword links are set on a website, it is mostly a case of webspam.
Quick link growth: If a website receives many incoming links quickly, Google may flag it as webspam.
Understanding the Importance of Links
Before Google came around, most search engines used keyword density as a major factor to determine the relevance of a website and how well it should rank in its search results. So that means that if you wanted your website to rank for the keyword ‘blue widgets’, you just place more instances of the words ‘blue widgets’ on your page.
Needless to say, these search results were not very hard to manipulate.
Google completely changed the rules of the game with the introduction of its PageRank algorithm. PageRank (PR), named after one of Google’s co-founders Larry Page, has its roots in academic notation — the more an academic paper is cited, the more authority it has. Google’s PageRank algorithm ambitiously (attempt) to rate the authoritativeness of every page on the Internet.
The Concept of Link-Building
The more links you have pointing to your website, the more authoritative it appears to be. Of course, not all links are treated equally.
A link from another authoritative website carries more weight than from a less authoritative one. Imagine the difference between being cited in one of Bertrand Russell’s works and in my college essay. As innovative as it was at the time, it didn’t take long for enterprising SEOs to figure out how to manipulate it.
They found out that if you received a link from a page with PR4, then your own page will have a PR2 (or so). So they started buying links on authoritative websites.
Buying Links
As PageRank grew more sophisticated over the years, so did black hat SEO tactics (those that conduct SEO activities that go against Google’s Guidelines). SEOs now have access to software that can virtually automate the link building process for us. This software can create email addresses, build forum profiles and even solve CAPTCHAs.
In short, SEOs have gotten very advanced in creating spam.
Even though this software creates links that are not authoritative, they can create thousands or millions of links within a short period of time and with less effort. Taken together, these links will help a website rank better in the SERPs… or it used to. Google’s Penguin algorithm — along with many of its other updates — attempts to stop this.
Penguin Targeted two Specific Practices:
Link schemes — The development, acquisition or purchase of backlinks from low-quality or unrelated websites, creating an artificial picture of popularity and relevance in an attempt to manipulate Google into bestowing high rankings. For example, an insurance company in Tampa could fill Internet forums with spam comments linking to itself as “best insurance company in Tampa”, falsely inflating its appearance of relevance with these unnatural links. Or, the same company might pay to have links reading “best insurance company in Tampa” appear on an unrelated third-party article about dog grooming; content that has no relationship to the topic.
Keyword stuffing — Populating a webpage with large numbers of keywords or repetitions of keywords in an attempt to manipulate rank via the appearance of relevance to specific search phrases. For example, an unnatural repetition of keywords on a given page might look like:
“AAA Locksmith in Denver, CO is the locksmith in Denver that Denver residents trust when they need a Denver locksmith to quickly help them with their Denver locksmith needs.”
Or, the hypothetical locksmith in Denver might stick a large block of city names on one of his website’s pages, like:
We serve Denver, Thornton, Boulder, Lakewood, Arvada, Thornton, Henderson, Centennial, Morrison, Golden, Aurora, Lone Tree, Castle Pines, Roxborough, Aspen, Conifer, Eldorado Springs, Lafayette, Watkins, Altona, Longmont, Dacono, Ponderosa Park, Hudson, Coal Creek, and Jamestown.
Time to get to the last, but not the least. Let’s get to Google Pigeon!
Google Pigeon
What is Google Penguin?
This update was released on July 24, 2014. Google Pigeonthecode name given to one of google’s local search algorithm, since the update was largely based on local search rankings and Pigeons are often flying back to the area they are most familiar with: home.
Google Pigeon is a blessing for small location-based businesses because the update is aimed to increase the ranking of local listing in a search and to provide local search results that are more relevant and accurate. It targets location-based keywords to rank higher in local searches, both on Google Search and Google Maps. This update provides the results based on the searcher’s location and the listing available in the local directory. For example, when searching for a query like “pizza san Francisco,” a user in the North Beach area of San Francisco would receive local results narrowed to that neighborhood instead of city-wide results.
However, it got mixed responses from critics saying that ranking will decrease as a result of this algorithm. It uses the location and distance of a user as its key strategy. This way the local directory listings get preference over other websites.
How does Google Penguin Work?
Now, to give you a better idea of how “Pigeon” affects you and your business, we’ve tried to outline all the changes going on both those claimed by Google and noticed by webmasters, and give some advice for website owners who’ve been affected.
1. Local listing packs disappear for a huge number of keywords
One of the key changes seen after the update is a drastically lower number of queries that now include a local listing pack of their SERPs. You may experience a drop in your website’s traffic due to the disappearance of some of your local listings.
What should you do?
If over the past few days your website has encountered a traffic drop, this may well be due to the disappearance of certain of your local listings. If that is the case, in the short run you may need to cover the traffic losses with a PPC campaign, and in the long run — focus on getting Web search listings for those keywords.
2. Local rankings are expected to depend more on website authority
Local search rankings are now being influenced more by traditional Web search ranking signals. Simply speaking, local rankings will now be more determined by domain authority, backlinks and all kinds of other SEO rankings factors.
What should you do?
If you see a decline in your local rankings, it may mean your competition’s general website/page SEO characteristics are stronger than yours.
Run thorough competition research to see how your backlinks, content and other SEO characteristics stand to those of other high ranking websites.
3. Ranking boost is seen for Yelp and other well-known local directories.
Data shows that local directories have gotten a major boost in search rankings. Your official business website or store pages may be displaced by store listings from directories. Yelp and other local directory sites have seen a considerable boost in rankings. For some queries, the entire SERP is built from well-known local directories only.
What should you do?
Even if less of your potential clients may now be able to find your biz website, many more of them can find you via local directory sites. This makes it crucial to build a solid business presence on leading local directories in your industry.
A. Find the most influential local directories in your niche. See which directories are currently ranking high for your targeted keywords after the update.
B. Make sure your business is listed in each of these directories. Submit your business to those directories, that are currently ranking high for your keyword, but don’t list your business yet.
C. Track how rankings change for your different listings. This way you always know which of the listings should be your priority in terms of freshest data, the biggest number of reviews and so on.
4. Local carousel remains a way to gain extra exposure.
Unlike the usual local listing packs, local carousel results remain unaffected by the update and show up with almost the same frequency as before. This means they can still be a great way to gain extra exposure for some local keywords.
What should you do?
Carousel results put a heavy emphasis on your listing’s image and rating while showing all options side-by-side. So make sure to put a nice, high-quality and attractive photo of your Google+ business profile and encourage your customers to review your business. Because that is the picture that is going to show up in the carousel.
Compiled by Saeid A. & Mia Ackerson.
December 2019
