Major Updates of Google Algorithm and why should one consider it

Google Algorithms are complex systems which retrieve data from search indexes and instantly provide the best possible results for the given query. With the combination of algorithms and ranking signals, Google’s search engine delivers the web pages by relevance. To provide the most relevant results, Google keeps updating its algorithm.

To have a place in Google’s Search Engine Result’s Page (SERP) is the goal of every person who wants their brand to be well known. In its early years, Google has come up with a handful of updates to its search engine algorithms. There is no limit to changes that are to be done to the algorithm, every year Google makes thousands and thousands of changes. For a complete list click here: All Google Search Updates.

Most of these changes are so small, that it gets unnoticed, but many rollouts have significantly upgraded the usage of SERP. In this context, we will see the major updates of the Google Algorithm.

Panda – 2011

Panda update was one of the major updates in the era of modern SEO. Google’s Panda update is created purely for the websites that were created to rank in the search engines. The Panda update features mostly focused on on-page factors. The two types of the page which were hit especially by the panda update are

• Affiliate sites – Sites that contain links to other pages.
• Sites with very thin Content.

After the first release of the Panda algorithm, Google kept re-ran the entire panda algorithm including its core. The Panda update has permanently changed the process of SEO and it has a major effect on how SEO is done on web pages.

Venice – 2012

Google’s Venice algorithm update bought an amazing change to the search results. In 2012, Google understood that most of the searches look for results that are local to them. So Venice update is done, in this update, Google’s search results include pages based on the location set or given by the user.

Penguin – 2012

This update focused on analyzing whether the backlinks to a site were genuine or not. As in the past, lots of people paid for the link as a shortcut to boosting their Google rankings. The buying or exchanging artificially creating links is discouraged by the update. The positive value link is changed to negative value when they found it as an artificial link. The Google algorithm Penguin update ran several times and by 2016 Google added it to the core algorithm in 2016. It resulted in the disappearance of the artificial links because of its low quality negative valued links. Link Building is permanently changed by the Penguin update. Rather than getting artificial links, Penguin has made people build a successful link building strategy to get relevant links from valued resources.

Pirate 2012

To prevent the illegal spreading of copyrighted content all over the internet. It considered many Digital Millennium Copyright Act requests for a website as a negative ranking factor for the first time.

Hummingbird – 2013

Hummingbird pays more attention to each word in a query so that the whole phrase is for the search is taken into account. At the very beginning of the update, the Hummingbird algorithm was not clear. It mostly focused that the SEO copy of the content should be readable; using natural language and it shouldn’t be optimized many times using the same keyword.

Pigeon – 2014

The Pigeon update algorithm more focused on local SEO, the pigeon update affected the page results and also Maps. By using this update one can get the best results near the user based on the user’s location. To make results more relevant and of higher quality, Pigeon update is made.

RankBrain – 2015

RankBrain is one of the unique algorithms, which employs machine learning to handle all types of queries. It can make guesses about the words it doesn’t know, to get the best matching results. It is considered s one of the most important of its Google ranking signals.

Medic – 2018

The Medic algorithm caused quite a stir for those low ranking pages, leading to some shifts in ranking. As a result of this update, a huge number of medical sites were hit with lower rankings. The reason behind the attempt is unclear, maybe it has been an attempt to better match results to the searchers.

BERT – 2019

BERT is considered one of the biggest changes in the last years. It’s a machine learning algorithm, a neural network-based technique for Natural Language Processing. The update can figure out the full context of a word that comes before and after it. In other words, it uses the context and relations of all the exact words in a sentence.

Reasons for Google’s algorithm updates

To prevent spammy results and web pages Google has come up with lots of updates starting from the early 2010’s. And then as time passed, to give the people exact results Google started to roll out new algorithms every time it feels that the core needs an update. Now with the use of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, the update become very easy and people are also used to regular updates of the algorithms. Google’s decision to provide the people with the best and properly organizes result is not encouraged by all.

If you are a person, who wants your website to rank top on search results and drive more traffic, then once in a while having a glance at the Google algorithm update is preferred. Because Google will not reveal all their updates in a big way, they try to keep it vague.

With a good update, you have some amazing features as a bonus. It may help or affect our

• Search ranking
• Visibility
• Return on Investment
• Revenue
• Conversions
• Organic Search Traffic

Google’s regular updates focus on rewarding a website’s good user experience and relevant content. So every update is a plus point and knowing the update can help us to surge our website’s Google Rank.