Have you ever wondered why Google keeps pumping out algorithm updates?

Techssocial | According to digital media companies in Hyderabad, SEO or content marketer are not in a position to accurately predict future updates of Google. It is said that even Google employees may not be aware of everything that happens with the leading search engine.

Google has released four algorithm updates, Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, and Pigeon. While these were the major updates, the search engine giant has also released some algorithm tweaks that had an impact on the rankings of websites. Wonder why Google keeps making so many changes in its algorithm?

But before getting into the details about the changes made by Google, one has to have a clear idea about an algorithm. An algorithm is a logical, step-by-step procedure to solve a problem. Search engines deal with the problem of finding the most relevant web pages/sites for a user-entered query.

Google is, without any doubt, the #1 search engine. It has achieved the status only after years of hard work and effort to deliver the best search results.

History of Algorithm Changes

Google has made both major as well as minor algorithm changes in the past few years.

In May 2016, it introduced a ranking signal boost that was aimed at benefiting mobile-friendly websites for mobile search. Apart from that, Google also made major changes to AdWords, and also a core algo update.

Though it did not give an official confirmation, there was a speculation in February 2015 that there were major updated in Google SERPs. Then in the month of April, Google made a pre-announcement of its algorithm update. It stated that the update would bring a difference in the rankings of mobile-friendly sites.

Google then introduced another update in May 2015. The update saw large-scale ranking changes. Google’s July update was touted to be a Panda data refresh and it’s October update

Google rolled out its RankBrain update. It revealed that machine learning was a part of the algorithm for several months. In the year 2014, Google made as many as 500 algorithm tweaks. Following these algorithm changes, a large number of websites had lost their ranking.

In February 2004, the search engine had introduced an update with the name Brandy. It was a major algorithm update that concentrated on anchor texts and Latent Semantic Indexing. LSI was the concept of looking at all the pages of a website to see if they have the search terms, this was in addition to the page that is indexed. As the years passed by, Google started focussing more on keyword analysis and intent.

SEO Benefits because of Google Algorithm Changes

In the past couple of years, we have seen a lot of positive effects Google’s algorithm changes on SEO including:

Commitment: Google has always maintained that its major goal is to help its users find the information they’re looking for within no time. The updates that Google introduced, further solidify this commitment.

Better rankings for longer content: Leading SEO services companies in Hyderabad agree with the point that modern SEO sees length as a strength. The current trend shows that longer, in-depth content has been dominating SERPs these days.

Advantage with fresh content: After the tweaks in its algorithm, Google has started giving priority to web pages that have fresh and updated content. When a website has freshly published content, Google automatically gives a better score to the site. This freshness score may fizzle out if there is no new content from time to time.

Digital media companies in Hyderabad reveal that the freshness score boosts the content for search queries. Google’s Panda update acted as a revolutionary change for SEO. The update had prompted almost all businesses that depended on Google’s ability of lead generation to pay attention.

Leading social media marketing services companies explain that SEO is never constant and it keeps evolving continuously. The Panda update, which was named after the engineer Biswanath Panda, had rolled out as the first search filter in February 2011. This filter monitored the quality of content and it also looked for thin websites. The filter prevented such sites from getting a better ranking in Google’s top SERPs.

While many sites lost their rankings with the Panda update, there were several sites that scored top rankings. There are certain factors that lead to the Panda penalty. They are:

• Duplicate content
• Inbound links with low quality
• Less or no-repeat site visits
• Meta tags that are irrelevant

It was in April 2014 that Google rolled out its Penguin update. While the focus of the Panda was on the quality of the content and websites, the Penguin algorithm updates concentrated mainly on incoming links.

The Penguin updates made it important to have quality links so websites score better ranking. Apart from finding bad links, the update also penalized websites with content stuffed with keywords. It also checked for over-optimization. While search engine optimization is a great technique, overdoing it causes trouble as the site may be penalized by Penguin.

Google released its Hummingbird update in September, 2013. This algorithm update proved to be one of the most significant updates released. Hummingbird became a precise and much faster platform for Google. The update gave more strength to Google’s commitment to helping the users find answers in a shorter time.

While Panda and Penguin were just algorithm updates, Hummingbird served as a total change that focused on improved search results. The core element of Hummingbird is conversational search. It is simple. It is how users type what they want on search engines. Conversational keywords are keywords that resemble questions, e.g., How to download videos?

Therefore, websites need to concentrate on aligning content and keywords to match conversational search.

The pigeon update came out in July 2014. This update claims to present more relevant and highly accurate local search results based on the parameters like distance and location ranking.

All the algorithm updates that have been rolled out by Google have revolutionized SEO. Understanding these updates thoroughly gives an idea of how to get listed on the top of Google’s SERPs.

So here is the answer to your question: Why Google keeps pumping out algorithm updates – Google has been making changes and updating its algorithm so it can come up with the most relevant search results faster. And if you are looking forward to your website to get listed on the top of Google’s SERPs, then read this article, understand, and get the clue.

editor

Hemant is Digital Marketer and he has 6 + years of experience in SEO, Content marketing, Infographic etc.

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