Google Algorithm Updates

Google is enhancing its spam detection system so that it can now discover links that have been bought and recognize domains that are mainly used to pass links to other websites. Spammy links are eliminated and any credit given by these unnatural links will be gone because of which, rankings may change. All languages will be impacted by this rollout. 

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-releases-december-2022-link-spam-update-390336 
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-december-2022-link-spam-update/474233/

Google stated that it seeks to elevate user-generated content while devaluing that created solely for search engine optimization. This will make it easier for Google’s algorithms to identify more types of low-quality material produced mainly for search engines rather than for people.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-helpful-content-system-update-rolling-out-now-390047 
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-helpful-content-algorithm-update-launching-soon/461882/ 

Google has rolled out the September 2022 broad core update which is the second board core update of 2022, with the first one being the May 2022 broad core update. The main goal of core updates is to make search results more accurate, useful, and beneficial to everyone.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-releases-september-2022-broad-core-update-387857 
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-announces-september-2022-core-algorithm-update/464195/ 

Google declared the desktop rollout of the page experience upgrade. It encompasses a number of explicit ranking factors including interstitials, the use of https, smartphone friendliness, and most crucially Core Web Vitals which are all clear rating criteria included in the page experience algorithm.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-page-experience-update-for-desktop-now-rolling-out-380548
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-page-experience-update-for-desktop-starts-rolling-out/439191/

Google unveiled a new update to award excellent product evaluations on December 1. According to reports, this change took three weeks to spread out. Reviews with “insightful analysis and original research,” particularly “content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well,” will be recognized, according to Google.
Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-december-2021-product-reviews-update-rolling-out-376672 
• https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/12/product-reviews-update-and-your-site 
• https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-2021-december-product-reviews-update/ 

According to Google, a local search algorithm update started spreading out at the close of November and ended on December 8. With this upgrade, Google “rebalanced” the ranking variables it takes into account when producing local search results. The ranking factors for Google’s local search results are Relevance, Distance & Prominence.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-november-local-search-update/430449/
• https://searchengineland.com/the-vicinity-update-winners-and-losers-from-the-november-2021-local-update-377624 

Google revealed a link spam update that allegedly took 2-4 weeks to spread out. Google claims that this extensive algorithm change affected many different languages. This link spam update targets spammy links “more broadly” and across multiple languages.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-search-link-spam-update-rolling-out-now-350770 
• https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/07/link-tagging-and-link-spam-update

Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) algorithm upgrade went live in June 2021. The algorithm upgrade was developed to offer consumers improved search results that will overcome formatting and language barriers.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2021/09/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-google-mum-update/ 
• https://seowebfirm.com/google-mum-ai-update/#:~:text=In%20June%202021%2C%20Google’s%20Multitask,better%20search%20experience%20to%20users

Google started implementing a change to how it ranks specific passages from a web page in search results. This upgrade was created to make it easier for users to discover information that was difficult to locate. According to Google, this change will affect 7% of search searches in all languages. There was no particular guidance on issues to address or changes to make because this upgrade was more about how Google knows your content, according to Google.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-passage-ranking-now-live-in-us-english-search-results-346034
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-passage-ranking-martin-splitt/388206/

Google announced that BERT was powering nearly all English-based search queries, a big leap from 10% it powered the year prior. Since BERT is made to enhance the relevance of search results by better comprehending website content, you cannot specifically optimize for it.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-bert-used-on-almost-every-english-query-342193

With the Featured Snippet Deduplication update, Google now only shows the Featured Snippet or the webpage as a regular search result, but not both on the first page. This means that if a webpage is already appearing as a Featured Snippet, it will not be repeated as a regular search result on the same page.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-featured-snippet-changes-impact-on-organic-traffic-study/345176/ 
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-featured-snippets-guidance/344972/ 
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-web-pages-in-featured-snippets-not-repeated-in-organic-listings/344748/ 
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-featured-snippet-update-causalimpact/349706/ 

The BERT update is a significant change to Google’s search algorithm that aims to improve the understanding of natural language processing and improve the accuracy of search results. Google employs BERT models to comprehend search queries better. Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or BERT, will be used on 10% of U.S. English searches, according to Google, who claimed that this change affected both search rankings and featured snippets.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-applies-new-bert-model-to-search-rankings-affecting-1-in-10-queries/332135/
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-bert-update/332161/
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-bert-misinformation/332931/
• https://searchengineland.com/welcome-bert-google-artificial-intelligence-for-understanding-search-queries-323976

Google made the September 2019 Core Update announcement on September 24, several hours before it was made public. According to statistics from different SEO toolset suppliers, this update appeared to have had a greater impact on results for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) sites, but the impact was not as substantial as the June core update.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-september-2019-core-update-to-roll-out-later-today-322523 
• https://searchengineland.com/google-sept-2019-core-update-weaker-than-june-core-update-322737

In June 2019, Google released a “site diversity update” which aimed to limit the number of results from a single domain appearing in the top search results for a given query. The update was designed to improve the diversity of search results, ensuring that users see a wider range of websites in the top results rather than multiple pages from the same domain.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://moz.com/blog/did-googles-site-diversity-update-live-up-to-its-promise 
• https://searchengineland.com/google-search-update-aims-to-show-more-diverse-results-from-different-domain-names-317934

The 1st August 2018 Core Update (also known as the Medic Update) was a major update to Google’s search algorithm. It was the third broad core algorithm update of 2018 and was announced by Google via Twitter on August 1st, 2018. The update was designed to improve the accuracy and relevance of search results, as well as to reduce the impact of low-quality content. It also aimed to better understand user intent and provide more relevant results.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-broad-search-algorithm-update-is-rolling-out-302982
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-recover-medic-update/294057/
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-update-confirmed/264105/

Chrome 68 started labelling all non-HTTPS sites as “not secure” after months of alerting users of unsecured (non-HTTPS) forms. The updates were released on July 24, but they depend on users downloading the most recent Chrome version, which can take weeks or months.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/tomorrow-chrome-starts-telling-users-http-sites-are-not-secure-302481 
• https://searchengineland.com/tomorrow-chrome-starts-telling-users-http-sites-are-not-secure-302481 

Google released the mobile page speed update, which included page performance as a ranking element for mobile results, six months after it was first announced. There was no proof of significant changes in mobile results, according to Google, which claimed that this only impacted the poorest mobile sites.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobile-search 
• https://www.seroundtable.com/google-speed-update-rolling-out-26017.html 

In June 2018, Google began showing video carousels in the search results for certain queries. This means that websites with video content have an opportunity to appear in the video carousel and potentially get more traffic.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://www.rankranger.com/blog/video-thumbnails-replaced-by-carousel 
• https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/trapped-in-google-video-carousels-case-study/ 

Google rolled back the majority of snippets to the previous character limit after trying lengthier display snippets of up to 300+ characters for a few months. (about 150-160 characters).

Refer to these sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-it-shortened-search-results-snippets-after-expanding-them-last-december-298196 

Google clarified in 2018 that with mobile-first crawling, the URL of your site’s mobile-friendly form is indexed. Google displays the mobile URL to mobile users and the desktop URL to desktop users if your website has distinct mobile and desktop URLs. The mobile form of the material will be indexed regardless.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-mobile-first-indexing/346170/#close 
• https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2018/03/rolling-out-mobile-first-indexing 

In March 2018, Google ran a global test of zero-results pages. These were search result pages that contained no organic links and only one knowledge card. A Zero-Click search occurs when a SERP displays the answer to a user’s query at the top of the page, which does not lead to a click. Zero-click results are often referred to as Quick Answers, Knowledge Boxes, Featured Snippets, or Top Stories (news).

Refer to these sources: 

• https://moz.com/blog/zero-result-serps 
• https://www.brandpoint.com/blog/googles-zero-result-serps-experiment/ 

The brackets core update was the most current change to Google’s core algorithm. The update changed how search engines rank webpages according to the value of their material. Although some website proprietors noted changes as early as March 2, the upgrade wasn’t distributed until around March 7.

Refer to these sources: 

• https://www.adprosmarketing.com/the-brackets-core-algorithm-update/#:~:text=What%20Is%20the%20Brackets%20Core,early%20as%20March%202nd
• https://googleupdates.co/brackets-core-update/ 
• https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/march-7-2018-google-algorithm-update-brackets/