Are you aware of Google Algorithm Latest Updates?

Are you wondering, why your website rank suddenly started dropping?

Is this because of latest google algorithm updates?

To understand briefly, Google algorithm is a methodology that Google uses to rank the web pages as per user query.

Google introduced and, updated 7 algorithms on a timely basis. Let’s get the best out of them.

Here we bring up the latest Google Algorithm updates as on March 2019:

1. Panda

Google framed this algorithm to make sure that the low-quality sites do not get the importance whereas the high-quality sites are kept on top in search engines.

What are the triggers for Google Panda update?

• Thin content: Little relevant info on the website page.
• Duplicate content: Different pages of the website with exact same info or a small variation.
• Low-quality content: The info that is not relevant to human readers.
• High ad-to-content ratio: Pages with more ads and less content.

To check all the triggers, go to Panda Algorithm.

Panda 4.2 Update: July 18, 2015

This update focuses on spammy links and low-quality content. All the sites got a chance to emerge out. However, this one rectified the issues to get out of the pack. Panda 4.2 did a recheck of all the sites. This update didn’t trigger the sites that performed well.

2. Penguin

This algorithm was created to stop the spam in search results. The Penguin update was released as well to give the opportunity to all the sites to regain their rankings if they have worked on removing disavow links.

What are the triggers for Google Penguin update?

• Link schemes: Buying or developing backlinks from low-quality or unrelated sites just to artificially portray the popularity and manipulating Google to rank them higher.
• Keyword stuffing:  Using the same keywords multiple times on the same page to make it relevant for the search query so that it gets a better rank.

More Info on Penguin Algorithm refer to the Penguin Algorithm.

Penguin 4.0 Update: September 23, 2016

This update mitigates spams in the search results. Below were the 2 spam activites, that were attacked:

• Keyword Stuffing
• Linking Schemes

Major changes in this update:

This update was integrated into Google’s core ranking algorithm, which is used to evaluate the site(s) while crawling it. The site started gaining its rank back after the issues that were responsible for a dip in their rank were resolved.

The second change was that it stopped penalizing the entire website for the spam signal and started the individual page analysis.

3. Hummingbird

This algorithm directed Google’s commitment to understanding the intention behind the user’s query and resulting in the best result.

The motive behind this algorithm: To better approximate the user’s intent behind the keyword that he/she used in the search engine. For Ex. “Motor Garages in India” should give the result about all the garages in India and not the motor brands or any other irrelevant data.

Hummingbird’s focus on “query searched, and the result found” is based on the intelligence of Google’s technology.

Hummingbird Update: August 21, 2013

This update was released for the motive of focusing on the semantic search. The specific goal is to offer more relevant and personalized results on the basis of trends/pattern, location, and online behavior.

4. Fred

The primary reason for bringing in Fred algorithm is to focus on Quality. Some paid techniques used by the site owners negatively impacted the user’s experiences.

This algorithm specifically hit sites with more advertising material and less or thin content.

This ad tactic did not pay well to the site owners and triggered the Fred algorithm. That’s not it. Even the poor-quality backlinks were also targeted to make the user experience worthwhile.

Backlinks to the sites with poor domain authority (DA), broken and out-of-date links were the culprits for Fred. This algorithm was released to Make SEOs believe that the link quality was responsible for site rank.

Outcome: Quality is better than quantity. It does not matter how much content you have if it’s not relevant and the same goes with the backlinks as well. Better the quality, better the rank is given by Google.

Google Link Quality Update – Fred: March 09, 2017

The update was related to the link quality. This update targeted sites that were over advertising. This used to attack the sites with more ads advertised to collect extra revenue and gave the inferiority complex to the content.

5. Pigeon

This algorithm was designed to concatenate Google’s local search algorithm with the web algorithm to make ranking parameters better basis on location & distance.

Why Pigeon was released?

• To put an emphasis on local businesses to have a strong web presence to get a better and complete rank.
• Improvement of Google’s calculation on local businesses’ location and distance. In many cases, it appeared that the search diameter was confined, preferring the businesses that were closest to the physical location of the searcher.  Because of this, there were many businesses that were found outside the packs in which they were previously ranking. 
• 7-pack local results were stopped by Google and decreased to 3 pack. It initially started with 10 and then brought down to 7 and finally to 3. This reduction also pushed some of the local businesses out of the 3-pack area.

Google Local Algorithm Expands: December 22, 2014

The local algorithm was introduced in July 2014 and stretched to the English-speaking countries globally which was later renamed to the industry given name of Pigeon.

It allowed Google to offer information about local searched with more accuracy and relevancy.

6. RankBrain

This algorithm is a part of Google’s core algorithm that adopted machine learning to understand the search query and presenting the relevant results. Before this, Google used to use the basic algorithm to determine the best results however was jumped to a kind of AI that used the interpretation model to detect some of the factors such as the location of the searcher, words used in the query, personalization to get to know the searcher’s intent.

Google through RankBrain utilizes the mathematical calculations to refine the results based on the pattern or trends that it sees in searcher’s behavior through the machine learning algorithm.

RankBrain Related Search Update (undisclosed): December 10, 2015

This update boosted Google’s special SERP features resulting in an increase in the number of SERP’s containing related search as well as the improvement in the word count of related search phrases averagely.

7. Mobile

As the name says, the mobile algorithm is something designed for mobile devices. This algorithm focuses on the mobile-friendliness of the site if it’s easy to access and navigate on mobiles or not.

If you have a mobile friendly website, then no need to worry about. This algorithm will not penalize you at all.

It’s a page to page signal and accesses each page one by one so the whole process depends on how fast Google crawls and indexes the pages.

How to be mobile-friendly:

• You can make your site responsive so that the same code works on all the devices without any change and the site molds itself as per the device size to make itself easily accessible.
• Make your web pages mobile friendly and check its friendliness on Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

Speed Update Release (Mobile): July 9, 2018

Google thought of releasing Speed update that forces the sites to improve the page speed on mobile so that it loads faster.

This update is only for the sites that are extremely slow wherein the minor changes will not change the ranking on Google search. The markable changes needed to be released so that Google notices the difference and rank the sites better.

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