Google Algorithm Updates

What Is Google algorithm?

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).

How search algorithm work?

With the amount of information available on the web, finding what you need would be nearly impossible without some help sorting through it. Google ranking systems are designed to do just that: sort through hundreds of billions of webpages in our Search index to find the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second, and present them in a way that helps you find what you’re looking for.

Major Google Algorithm Updates

1. GOOGLE PANDA

Google panda

Google Panda is a major change to Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites" in particular "content farms",and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.

Launched Date: Feb 24, 2011

Goal: De-rank sites with low-quality content.

2. GOOGLE PENGUIN

Google Penguin

Google Penguin aims to identify and down-rank sites with unnatural link profiles, deemed to be spamming the search results by using manipulative link tactics. Since late 2016, Penguin has been part of Google’s core algorithm, it works in real time.

Launched Date: April 24, 2012

Goal: De-rank sites with spammy and manipulative link profiles.

Confirmed penguin updates

Penguin 1 on April 24, 2012

Penguin 2 on May 26, 2012

Penguin 3 on October 5, 2012

Penguin 4 (also known as Penguin 2.0) on May 22, 2013

Penguin 5 (also known as Penguin 2.1) on October 4, 2013

Penguin 6 (also known as Penguin 3.0) on October 17, 2014

Penguin 7 (also known as Penguin 4.0) on September 23, 2016

3. GOOGLE HUMMINGBIRD

Google Hummingbird

Google Hummingbird places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords. It also looks deeper at content on individual pages of a website, with improved ability to lead users directly to the most appropriate page rather than just a website's homepage.

Google Hummingbird is a major algorithm change that has to do with interpreting search queries, (particularly longer, conversational searches) and providing search results that match searcher intent, rather than individual keywords within the query.

Launched Date: August 22, 2013

Goal: Produce more relevant search results by better understanding the meaning behind queries.

4. GOOGLE PIGEON

Google Pigeon

The main goal of this update (Google Pigeon) is to rank websites higher on SERPs based on location and distance from where a particular user is querying for information.

After this update, the websites listed in the local directory started to rank higher on SERPs for a particular location search within a specific distance. This update was majorly helpful to local business and users looking for services at their nearby localities.

Launched Date: July 24, 2014

Goal: Provide high quality, relevant local search results.

5. MOBILEGEDDON-MOBILE FRIENDLY UPDATE

Google Mobilegeddon

Google's Mobile Friendly Update is meant to ensure that pages optimized for mobile devices rank at the top of mobile search, and subsequently, down-rank pages that are not mobile friendly.

The main effect of this update was to give priority to websites that display well on smartphones and other mobile devices. The change did not affect searches made from a desktop computer or a laptop.

Launched Date: April 21, 2015

Goal: Give Mobile friendly pages a ranking boost in mobile SERPs, and de-rank pages that aren’t optimized for mobile.

6. GOOGLE RANKBRAIN

Google RankBrain

RankBrain is a machine learning-based search engine algorithm, the use of which was confirmed by Google on 26 October 2015. It helps Google to process search results and provide more relevant search results for users

Launched Date: October 26, 2015

Goal: Deliver better search results based on relevance & machine learning.

7. GOOGLE POSSUM

Google Possum

Google Possum update (nicknamed by SEO community) was launched in September 2016 to give a boost to a local business that is closer to the city limits (in the border) but technically out of the city.

Google realized that such businesses should be listed on local search results for that particular city, even though they are technically out of the city.

In the same update, Google also swept away the search rankings of a website that had multiple listings for the same sites in different individual’s names. Google filtered out such duplicate entries based on phone number, domain name and physical address of the listing.

Launched Date: September 1, 2016

Goal: Deliver better, more diverse results based on the searcher's location and the business address.

8. GOOGLE FRED

Google Fred

Google Fred update was launched in March 2017. Its main aim was to lower the ranking of websites or web pages that content-wise added no value to users but were completely focused on aggressive monetization through advertisements.

Launched Date: March 8, 2017

Goal: Filter out low quality search results whose sole purpose is generating ad and affiliate revenue.

9. GOOGLE BERT

Google Bert

Google BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and is an update to the core search algorithm aimed at improving the language understanding capabilities of Google.