Google has been bringing changes to its ranking algorithm almost every other day which we generally refer to as updates. While some are the minor tweaks and tuning, others heavily modify the search engine result page. Many of the users are unknown to the fact that many times the search results appearing at the top often changes due to these Google Important Update.
Google has made quite a few remarkable and important updates which shook up the SERs a couple of times. Since, the search engine has evolved quite a lot over the last decade, here are some of the important updates introduced from latest to oldest.
1.GOOGLE IMPORTANT UPDATE- MARCH 2017
This update was unofficially named “Fred”; its purpose was to crack down on monetary prioritized sites over providing the user experience. The name “Fred” was assigned by Gary Illyes. Google announced a penalty in August 2016, poorly ranking the pages where content wasn’t accessible on the transition from mobile searches. Google posed penalty against following actions-
- Showing a popup covering the main content.
- Displaying a standalone interstitial
- Using a layout where above the fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial.
2.GOOGLE IMPORTANT UPDATE PENGUIN-SEPTEMBER 2016
In 2016, penguin update went real time to become part of Google’s algorithm and devalued “spam” emails at a granular level so as to enforce site-wide penalties. Sites see an improved ranking if they cleaned their spam links after the update.
3.GOOGLE IMPORTANT UPDATE POSSUM- SEPTEMBER 2016
Google got this name from the impact it had on My Business listings. Possum provides local search rankings in following ways-
- Business outside the city ranks higher on the search results.
- New location filter digs out the locations with similar addresses.
4.GOOGLE IMPORTANT UPDATE RANKBRAIN- OCTOBER 2015
Google introduces an AI into the algorithm. The update gives Google search’s algorithm the ability to understand relationships between words and deduction of results.
5.GOOGLE IMPORTANT UPDATE MOBILEGEDDON- APRIL 2015
Google in the year 2015 announced that sites with the tag mobile friendly would experience better search visibility. This was just a promotion of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.
6.GOOGLE IMPORTANT UPDATE PIGEON – JULY 2014
Google released its update in 2014 named pigeon. The update was aimed at increasing the rank of local listings in the search engine. The changes had quite a significant impact on the Google maps.
7.GOOGLE IMPORTANT UPDATE HUMMINGBIRD – 2013
Google gave an algorithm update with the code name hummingbird, derived from the speed and accuracy of the bird. The update placed emphasis on the native language queries and a deeper insight into individual pages on the websites and keywords.
8.GOOGLE IMPORTANT UPDATE KNOWLEDGE GRAPH – 2012
The goal of this Algorithm update was to make search results quicker to provide the user with the relevant information quickly and easily. It has an understanding of the real-world entities with a knowledge graph consisting of more than 3.5 billion facts about relationships between various objects.
9.GOOGLE IMPORTANT UPDATE PANDA- February 2011
Panda was introduced to tackle with the growing number of complaints in the community regarding low quality of content and to tackle with the problem of low-quality content ranking higher than high quality.
Through such major Google Important Update, Google managed to acclaim an edge over the other competitors and was able to sustain high-quality web material at higher ranks for the users. Knowledge about such Google Important Update helps the bloggers to understand how to create effective blogs to attract more users. For more information regarding these updates, you can reach out at ops@cosmolance.com and we will be happy to help you.
