Google comes with algorithm tweaks frequently. Year by year, its searches are living up to the user’s expectations. It’s all algorithm rollouts are intended to bridge the rift between the searchers and the content publishers. These updates have become a powerhouse of SEO services. Online marketing is flourishing with an ethical boost to search engine optimization tips and tricks. Let’s walk through the rundown of the top ten Google algorithm updates.
1. Medic:
Introduced in: 1 August, 2018
Targets: ‘Your Money Your Life’ types of websites, especially the health & medical-based websites.
Vitality: This update is a major core algorithm revival. It is awarded the rank to the incredible content that has been under-rewarded previously. Simply saying, the good content that doesn’t pop in the top ranks on SERPs over time is targeted. Google has attempted to reward them through this update. However, a few health, insurance, parenting, and money-based websites gained or lost their rank temporarily.
Repair: No fix is required, according to the Google liaison Danny Sullivan. But, focusing on building great content could be beneficial.
2. Mobile-First Indexing:
Introduced in: 26 March, 2018
Targets: Indexing and searches via mobile
Vitality: It was an attack on the typical desktop version indexing. Google experienced that mobile searches are more than 50 percent. But, most of the sites fail to get uploaded in less than 3 seconds, which is a standard. Consequently, the deserving content faces a lag in ranking in Google searches. Therefore, it significantly shifted its bots’ crawling, indexing, and ranking to the mobile version of the website.
Repair: The responsiveness and mobile-friendliness of the website became a norm.
3. Fred
Introduced in: 8 March, 2017
Targets: Interstitial ads and affiliate banners loaded with thin content
Vitality: It was a step to end the overpowering of revenue-generating ads and affiliate banners. These ads deterred the quality of the content. Thereby, the users get off the content that serves more interstitial ads than what they actually desire to find.
Repair: Google updated the Webmaster guidelines. It explicitly warned to watch out for the thin content. Rather than tricking and raking in money, pull in the traffic through ample information.
4. Possum
Introduced in: 1 September, 2016
Targets: Online competition among global competitors
Vitality: With this update, the giant search engine cheered the local searches. The phrase ‘local searches’ signifies the searchability of the businesses closer to the business location.
Repair: The webmasters and SEO service providers expanded the list of keywords. More phrases are added to specify keywords targeting a physical location. The locations of the businesses are listed in Google Maps and business listing sites.
5. RankBrain
Introduced in: 26 October, 2015
Targets: Irrelevancy against the query, shallow content
Vitality: RankBrain is a prominent update that was done to serve the best-matching search results against the queries. It emerged as a crucial query-specific ranking factor.
Repair: This update mandated optimizing the content so that more understandable and relevant content could be served to the users. Even, competitive analysis gained the focus to invite relevancy in the content.
6. Mobilegeddon:
Introduced in: 21 April, 2015
Targets: Unfriendly to mobile sites, unresponsive sites
Vitality: This update pushed the bots to churn the mobile-friendly sites and assign them a space in the top SERPs ranking.
Repair: This update boosted the optimization of the web pages so that their mobile version could be accessed hastily. Thereby, its visibility could be enhanced. Its impact started attracting top Google ranks. Content auditing and page-speed testing do this trick for SEO experts.
7. Pigeon:
Introduced in: 24 July (UK), 22 December (USA, Canada & Australia), 2014
Targets: Un-optimized on-page and off-page
Vitality: It spotlighted the user’s location in the online search. The local algorithm has started working closely with the core algorithm. This is how the local searches via SEO promotions got a boost.
Repair: The on-page and off-page optimization got attention. On-page analysis using analysis tools, like website auditor, caught eyes to see the on-page via the lens of an SEO geek. Apart from that, business listing in directories and location-specific keywords gained momentum.
8. Hummingbird:
Introduced in: 22 August, 2013
Targets: Thin content, keyword stuffing
Vitality: Google wanted to serve what matches the searcher’s intent. The hummingbird update directed the digital marketing experts & content masters to publish what interprets the search queries require. Keywords, as usual, emerged in the mainstream.
Repair: The content experts emphasized introducing long-tail keywords. The latent semantic indexing became an SEO trend. Instead of focusing on keyword stuffing, content creators instinctively use long-tail keywords and synonyms.
9. Penguin
Introduced in: 24 April, 2012
Targets: Bad backlinks, including spammy, irrelevant and over-optimized links
Vitality: This update shot down the ranking sites that play with manipulative links. It showed results in real-time. The tricking sites were penalized with low –ranks in the SERPs.
Repair: The impacted sites went through the link profiles & their growth. They went through regular audits and even, checked the quality of the backlinks. It is modeled on SpyGlass’s Penalty Risk formula. This update targeted the irrelevant and bad backlinks that don’t match the context of the website.
10. Panda
Introduced in: 24 February, 2011
Targets: Thin content, comprising duplicate, spammy, and keywords stuffed content
Vitality: The Panda update infused ‘quality score’. It implies that the web pages would be filtered through the quality funnel. In response, the search engine would evaluate its quality by assigning a particular score. In 2016, this algorithm was incorporated with its core algorithm. Subsequently, the core algorithm updates have been frequently rolled out.
Repair: To overcome the bout of downranking, webmasters ran a regular audit of the content. The content duplicity, plagiarized content, and keyword stuffing were scanned to remove.