Google Algorithms And Their Impact On Search Results

Google has been and will keep on updating the algorithms to save us from various threats and to improve the performance of SEO. Some of those algorithms affected in a good way while some trembled the search engine page results. A few of the most important updates that surprised and shocked everyone in the past years are:

•    Panda in 2011

It looks for plagiarized content, Duplication of material in webpages, Keyword stuffing, and spamming. Panda was a filter which used to do the above stuff, and now it is a part of the core ranking algorithm. In 2011 the websites that contained poor quality content but were at the top of search engine results because of plagiarism and keyword stuffing. Panda keeps on updating, and the sites that were previously affected by panda can make their way out by updating unique/authentic articles and by applying the correct means of search engine optimization.

•    Penguin in 2012   

This update brought down irrelevant links, the links which had anchor text and were over optimized, means present on a lot of sites. The sites which were caught in the penalties of Penguin thought if they change/improve their way of optimization their site might get back to its original state in no time. The next update took place in the year 2014, and the sites that got hit by the Penguin waited almost two years to come out of those penalties. In short, the sites remained penalized until the filter ran the next time.

•    Hummingbird in 2013 and Rankbrain in 2015

This was another update, but this time it didn’t affect the websites but was for Google itself and in a way it was beneficial for the sites who have authentic content but weren’t able to rank up in the search engine. This update focused on the better interpretation of search queries, this is where the keywords use was reduced, and the sites that didn’t contain keywords got a chance to rank because of the quality content. People weren’t shown sites in SERP that just focused on keywords, but they were able to find articles that were relevant to their search query.

The RankBrain update became a part of the Hummingbird algorithm, and it was developed to understand the meanings behind the queries made on a search engine. RankBrain is basically a machine learning system, and it looks for relevance between the queries and the content of the websites.

•    Pigeon in 2014 and Mobilegeddon in 2015

The Pigeon update changed the way optimizers used to work on Off-Page and On-Page SEO. This major update included searches based on the user’s location. Optimizers have been working on local SEO since then so that when people search from any part of the world, they will be shown results based on their location

The Mobilegeddon update was for mobile-friendly sites; the responsive designs then became quite popular. People using a mobile browser were shown ranked mobile-friendly pages at the top of search engine page results and the sites which weren’t mobile optimized got removed from the results page.

•    Possum in 2016 and Fred in 2017

The Possum update was to provide you with better local search results for example if you search for a hotel in an area you will be shown the hotel nearest to your location. So, your spot when you look for some items and places really matter and if your website offers services in an area, make sure to increase the local search engine optimization of your business.

If your website contains ads and it is one of the sources of your income then make sure the pages the ads are on contains high-quality content. The Fred update is all about targeting the websites that do not follow the guidelines of Google regarding displaying advertisements. It is one of the latest significant updates by Google and has affected sites that show ads on pages and have low-quality content. A lot of blogs and sites got penalized that were created for the motive of just making money through advertisements.