Mystery of Google's Updates

The Dark Mystery Of Google's Updates

 

SEO, as it is practiced today, centers around Google. This has mostly to do with the sheer traffic they're getting. These days, "Google It" also means "to use a search engine to look something up"; which only proves how deep Google's search engine has been integrated into our daily lives.

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Every time Google's algorithm changes, entire SEO strategies change. Back then, keywords equated to relevance, so people relied on those. Then the Panda Update came in, and having so many keywords became a disadvantage. This is why it's so important to know how Google changes gears and adapt accordingly.

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In this guide, we'll look at a brief timeline of how Google's algorithm came to be and discover how its evolution subsequently changes SEO along with it.

 

2000

 

Google Toolbar - December - Google launches their toolbar made available for browsers. More importantly, they released Toolbar PageRank (TBPR), which started the race to the top of the search.

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2002

 

First documented update - September - not much is known about this, but most sources say it's a standard Google Dance and PageRank update.​

 

2003

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• Florida - November - The change that brought SEO into action. Many websites lost their rankings, and even more business owners were dissatisfied. Low-value SEO strategies from the 1990s had eventually died out. Keyword stuffing was no longer an option, and the competition was heating up.

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• Supplemental Index - September - The "Supplemental Index" was created to allow Google to index other documents without negatively impacting results. This became a contentious topic before the index was reintegrated.

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• Fritz - July - With the release of the "Fritz" update, the monthly "Google Dance" came to an end. Instead of overhauling the index entirely on a monthly basis, Google took a more gradual approach. The index was now fluctuating on a regular basis. Instead of overhauling it weekly, Google switched to a gradual or "bit by bit" approach with this update. Every day, the index fluctuated.

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• Esmerelda - June -This was Google's last scheduled monthly update. Following that, a continuous upgrade procedure was initiated. "Everflux" was installed in place of "Google Dance." There were some significant systemic improvements in Google as a result of this update.

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• Dominic - May - This was one of the changes that occurred in May, but it was not the most straightforward to explain. Freshbot and Deepcrawler were crawling around the internet and bouncing sites. Backlinks also started to be counted, and the way they were recorded changed dramatically.

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• Cassandra - April - Google got down to business with Cassandra, focusing on simple link-quality issues. One of the key focuses for this update was massive linking from co-domains and secret text and links.

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• Boston - February - Boston was the first "named" Google update, and it also happened to be the first big monthly update. The first few updates included both algorithm modifications and index refreshes. When daily updates became a necessity, the monthly concept died.

 

2004

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• Google's Initial Public Offering (IPO) - August - This was not an algorithm shift, but it was a significant event in Google's history. Google sold 19 million shares, raising $1.67 billion and putting the company's market cap at just over $20 billion. Google's stock will be worth twice as much four months later.

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• Brandy - February - There were a lot of updates that came out in February. Anchor text relevance has become more important, as has Latent Semantic Indexing and connection "neighborhoods." Google's ability to find synonyms for search terms was improved thanks to LSI, which also improved keyword analysis.

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• Austin - January - Austin took care of the issues that Florida had left behind. Google continued to crack down on shady on-page strategies such as hidden text and META-tag stuffing. There was widespread speculation that Google had resurrected the "Hilltop" algorithm and was now placing a premium on the page relevance.

 

2005

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• Big Daddy - December -  Big Daddy, like the "Caffeine" update, was designed to update infrastructure. This update took three months to complete and was released in March. Big Daddy modified the canonicalization and redirects (301/302).

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• Jagger - October -  In October, Google launched the Jagger series of updates, which were designed to target low-quality links. Reciprocal links, paid links, and link farms were among the low-quality links. This update was released between September and November.

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• Google Local/Maps - October -  Google moved all of its Maps data into the Local Business Center after it was launched. Requesting that companies upgrade their details will potentially result in a number of improvements in terms of local SEO.

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• Gilligan - September -  This was initially labeled as a bogus upgrade. Google reported that they had made no major improvements to the algorithm, but webmasters were reporting changes all over the place.

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• Personalized Search - June -  With this redesign, Google "truly" implemented the personalized search. In contrast to previous versions, personalized search, which required users to build custom settings on their profiles, has been fully streamlined. Though this began as a small experiment, Google would go on to use it, along with search history, for a variety of purposes in the future.

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• Sitemaps in XML - June - With this update, webmasters can now use Webmaster Tools to submit XML sitemaps. This did away with the old HTML web pages and gave SEOs some control over indexation and crawling.

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• Bourbon - May - Bourbon, according to WebmasterWorld representatives, affected how duplicate content and non-canonical URLs were treated.

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• Allegra - February - Many webmasters noticed improvements in their rankings across the board, but it wasn't entirely clear what this update accomplished. Allegra was thought to have influenced the "sandbox," but others speculated that the LSI had been altered. Around this point, people started to believe that Google was penalizing links that seemed to be suspicious.

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• Nofollow - January - The "nofollow" attribute was implemented to combat spam and regulate the consistency of outbound links. This is being launched simultaneously by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. This update, which was not a conventional algorithm update, helped to clean up spam blog comments and disavowed links. When it comes to the connection graph effect, this was a major change.

 

2006

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• False Alarm - December - Though Google did not actually report any changes, there was a lot of buzz in the SEO community in November and December 2006 about possible major changes.

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• Supplemental Update - November -  The year 2006 was marked by supplementary index adjustments. The way pages were filtered changed dramatically as a result of this. Even though it seemed to be a punishment, Google stated that this supplemental update was not meant to be a punishment.

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• Buffy - June -  Since Vanessa Fox was leaving Google, this update was dubbed "Buffy." It's unclear what happened with this update, but according to Matt Cutts, Buffy was only a set of smaller changes.

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• Universal Search - May -  This algorithm update combined traditional search results with vertical results such as Video, Local, Images, News, and others. The 10-listing SERP was then completed.

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2008

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• Google Suggest - August -  Google implements "Suggest" and updates the logo/box style homepage dramatically. In a new menu below where the visitor is typing, "Suggest" shows suggested searches. This will later be used to power Google Instant.

• Dewey - April -  It was speculated that Google's internal assets were being pressed down in late March/early April in what seemed to be a larger step. This included Google Books, but there is no concrete proof of this happening.

 

2009

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• Real-time Search - December -  Real-time has taken on a life of its own. Newly indexed material, feeds, as well as other links were pushed together in a real-time update format on some SERPs. Social media, as well as other outlets, continued to increase in popularity.

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• Caffeine Preview - August - This was Google's foreshadowing of a massive infrastructure change. This move was made to improve the crawling pace, expand the total index, and integrate ranking and indexation right away. The preview in the United States lasted the remainder of the year and wasn't fully operational until early 2010.

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• Rel-canonical Tag - February - Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft have all launched campaigns to support Canonical Tags. This allowed webmasters to send canonicalization signals without affecting human visitors.

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• Vince - February - This was the main update, according to many SEOs, that began to support major brands. Even though Matt Cutts described the update as a "minor shift," it had far-reaching and long-lasting consequences.

 

2010

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• Social Signals - December - Google and Bing have confirmed that social signals such as Twitter and Facebook are used to manipulate rankings.

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• Negative Reviews - December - Google revised its algorithm to address the issue after a major story broke about how a brand was being forced up the search results after users protested (and left links to the website).

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• Instant Visual Previews - November - Within the search results, Google added a new feature that enabled you to see a visual preview of a website. It didn't last long.

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• Google Instant - September -  This is an enhancement to Google suggest, in which Google displays real results before the query is completed.

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• Brand Update - August - Google has changed its policy to allow some domains to appear on page one of certain searches multiple times (up to 8 times).

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• Caffeine (Implementation) - June -  Caffeine is a modern web indexing framework introduced by Google in June 2010. It was designed to increase indexing speed and provide users with more recent performance.

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• May Day - May - Between April 28th and May 3rd, there was an update, and some webmasters noticed a drop in traffic, especially long-tail traffic. This was a response to the Panda update and was an algorithm change to better fight content farms.

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• Google Places - April - Google Places replaced the Local Business Center. This included all of the previous Google Places features and a few new ones, such as ads, a service area, and more.

 

2011

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• Google released ten updates - December - In addition to the previous list, there is a blog post about changes made in late 2011. A parked domain classifier (which reduces the number of parked domains displayed to users in results), autocomplete, and image freshness are among the new features.

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• Panda 3.1 - November - Google Panda has been updated.

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• Google releases ten updates - November - Although no timeline was given, Google published a blog post highlighting ten changes, including better snippets and fresher performance.

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• Fresher Results Update - November -  A change to the algorithm in which Google wants to show more recent results, particularly for time-sensitive queries.

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• Search Encryption - October -  This update enraged SEOs because it marked the beginning of the (not provided) appearing in Analytics. In order to protect users' privacy, Google began encrypting data when they signed in. This makes determining the source of your organic traffic even more difficult. SEMrush and Webmaster Tools are two good alternatives (GWMT will tell you the words you're rating for).

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• Panda 2.5 - September -  Another Panda news has launched. -

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• Pagination Elements - September -  To help with pagination crawl / index problems, Google implemented the rel=" next" and rel=" prev" link attributes.

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• Sitelinks Have Been Expanded - August -  Google also expanded the display of site links, making it easier to navigate to relevant content directly from a quest.

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• Panda 2.4 - August -  Panda is now available all over the world.

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• Panda 2.3 - July -  Panda has released yet another manual push.

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• Google+ - June -  Google has launched Google+, a Facebook-like app that aims to combine various Google services for a more personalized experience. They distinguish themselves by dividing people into "circles," allowing you to share differently with different groups of people. They rapidly gain a large number of users, but it is met with harsh criticism when it first launches.

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• Panda 2.2 - June -  Panda has been updated.

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• Schema.org - June -  Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have teamed up to build structured data. Webmasters can now use a structured markup for all types of data thanks to a home base at http://schema.org.

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• Panda 2.1 - May -  Another Panda update has become available.

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• Panda 2.0 - April -  The first Panda update has been released, and it is now available worldwide.

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• Panda (also known as Farmer) Update - February -  This is a major upgrade, the first of its kind. Up to 12% of search results were affected as a result of this. Panda was aimed at "information farms," or big sites with low-quality content, thin affiliate sites with no content, sites with high ad-to-content ratios, and over-optimization on the web.

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• Attribution Update - January -  This update was made to aid in the prevention of content theft by scrapers. It affected about 2% of all search queries.

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• Penalty for Overstock.com and JCPenny - January - In preparation for forthcoming changes, Google began openly criticizing websites for their SEO activities, igniting the PR-scare-train.

 

2012

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• Panda - December -  Panda arrives just in time for the holidays. Following that, Google says it would strive to stop making updates during the holidays.

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• Knowledge Graph Expansion - December -  On foreign language searches in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian, the knowledge graph becomes accessible.

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• Panda #22 - November -  Panda refresh 22 has been verified by Google, impacting 0.8 percent of queries.

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• Panda #21 - November - A month and a half after the previous update, Google Panda released another update. According to reports, 1.1 percent of English queries were affected.

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• Update #2 to the Page Layout - October -  An improvement to the page layout that impacted sites with too many advertisements above the fold.

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• 65 Changes Pack for August and September - October -  Google released a post detailing 65 updates that were released between August and September 2012. New features to Knowledge Graph, a Panda refresh, and Knowledge Graph Carousel are among the items on the list.

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• Update on the Exact-Match Domain (EMD) - September -  It appeared that EMDs were getting a boost before this update. If you were to rank for "dallasdentist," for example, getting dallasdentist.com would be a big help. Since this technique became popular and was widely used in the SEO community, Google modified its algorithm to minimize these techniques' boost. This also affects the fines for over-optimization. To prevent over-optimization of URLs, it's now recommended that you only get non-keyword-rich domains.

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• Panda #20 - September -  This update was released concurrently with the EMD update and was very important, affecting 2.4 percent of queries.

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• Panda 3.9.2 - September -  Panda was updated, but nothing major was changed, and only 0.7 percent of queries were affected.

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• Panda 3.9.1 - August -  Another Panda update has become available.

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• SERPs Update - August -  For approximately 18% of searches, Google began showing just 7 results on the front page.

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• The DMCA Penalty - August -  Google has announced that it will begin penalizing websites that are guilty of copyright infringement on a regular basis.

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• 86 Google updates - August -  The Inside Search blog has a big update. In June and July, 86 updates were released, including Panda updates, related terms, freshness, events in the information graph, and more.

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• Panda 3.9 - July -  Another Panda refresh was released by Google, impacting 1% of queries.

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• Link Warnings in the Webmaster Tool - July -  WMT sent out another round of unnatural connection alerts. The crazy part is that Google said in June that you should pay attention to these notices because if you don't, your site will likely be penalized. However, as of July, Google claims that you might be able to ignore them, implying the exact opposite. The best thing to do is keep an eye on your traffic and rankings.

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• Panda 3.8 - June -  Another data refresh for Panda.

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• Panda 3.7 - June -  Another Panda update.

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• 39 Google Updates - May -  In May, Google released an official blog post detailing 39 updates, including "Better implementation of inorganic backlinks signals," "Improvements to Penguin," and others.

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• Penguin 1.1 - May -  Google has released the first update to the Penguin algorithm, which is simply a data refresh.

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• Knowledge Graph - May -  Google has made several changes to its search results. The aim of a knowledge graph is to accomplish a few goals. One is the ability to distinguish between people, locations, and objects. The second is to provide responses and summaries in the search results, allowing you to easily obtain facts or details without having to visit any websites.

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• 52 Google Updates - April -  In April 2012, Google released a blog post detailing 52 changes, including improvements to the freshness signal (no freshness boost for low-quality content), updates for displaying public data, a 15% rise in the base index, and improvements to site links, among others.

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• Panda 3.6 - April -  Another Panda data refresh.

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• Google Penguin - April -  The SEO world was rocked by this change. Penguin, which is known for harshly punishing sites that use so many exact match anchors, impacted 3.1 percent of English queries (big update). This, according to Google, has an effect on keyword stuffing, but it's mainly linked to off-site causes.

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• Panda 3.5 - April -  Another Panda update.

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• Bug with Parked Domains - April -  Although webmasters confirmed ranking declines, Google stated that a bug in the way they identify parked domains caused the problem.

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• Google Updates Pack - April -  Panda 3.4, the way anchor text is computed, image search, and local query updates are among the other changes.

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• Panda 3.4 - March -  Another update on Panda.

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• 40-Pack Update - February -  Google released 40 updates in February, including updates to "related searches, site links, autocomplete, UI components, indexing, synonyms, SafeSearch, and more," according to a blog post on their Inside Search blog.

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• Venice - February -  A significant change has been made to the way Old G shows results – Basically, even if you don't use a geo-modifier, local sites can start to appear when you type in queries. For example, if you type in "attorney," you could get results tailored to your location based on your IP address. This is fantastic news for local SEOs and usability in general. Also, seemingly innocuous words like "coffee" produce local results.

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• Google Updates - January -  Another inside search blog from January 2012 details 17 changes, including Panda's incorporation into the main algorithm and "freshness" updates.

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• Updated Page Layout - January -  Changes to how pages are rated – You can lose rankings if you have too many advertisements above the fold.

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• Panda 3.2 - January -  Another Panda refresh/update.

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• Search + Your World - January -  Google will also try to include more relevant content in your searches if you use Google Plus. In order to find the most important details, items you've shared in the past, pictures from your g+ profile, and things your friends have posted will pop up in your search results. Google primarily loves Google+ and wants to impose it on everyone.

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• Google Announces 30 New Features - January - Another Inside Search blog post highlights 30 new features, including site links, improved image search, and more.

2013

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• Authorship Change - December - Matt Cutts leaked that authorship markup will play a smaller role in the future, and around December 19th, we saw a 15 percent decrease in a month's time.

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• No Name Update - December - Although Google did not confirm an update, almost all algorithm change trackers showed a spike in activity around December 17th.

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• No Name Update - November - Unusual behavior was recorded, which occurred alongside widespread DNS errors in Google Webmaster Tools. This was not an official announcement, and Google has not confirmed any changes.

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• Penguin 2.1 - October - This seems to be a minor modification to the Penguin algorithm rather than a significant improvement.

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• Hummingbird - August - On September 26th, Google revealed the latest update, claiming that "Hummingbird" had been available for about a month, beginning on August 20th. Hummingbird is a Google update that improves the way text and queries are entered into the search engine. There were no common accounts of Penguin or Panda-style fines.

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• In-depth Article Update - August - Google also added a new category of content to their search results called "In-depth posts," which are lengthy articles that cover a subject from beginning to end.

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• No Name Update - July - However, there were significant increases in search engine monitoring activity following another unconfirmed Google update.

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• Expansion of Knowledge Graph - July - Knowledge Graph data began to appear in far greater numbers in search results, accounting for approximately 25% of all searches.

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• Update on the Panda (Fine Tuning) - July - A new Panda update that is said to be "softer" than others, likely loosening up the rungs of previous updates, according to sources. This one was released over a ten-day span.

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• Multi-Week Update - June - "Multi-week rollout going on now, from next week all the way to the week after July 4th," Cutts tweets in response to Screaming frog's tweet that someone was spamming for. "Car Insurance" and it ranked them #2.

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• Panda Dance - June - Matt Cutts explained that Google releases Panda updates on a regular basis, roughly every month, over a 10-day span. They also mentioned that potential Panda updates are unlikely to be announced because they are still in progress.

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• Update on Payday Loans and Spam Query - June - Google has released an update to its algorithm that focuses on queries that are often spammed for SEO purposes, such as payday loans, porn, and other topics.

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• Penguin 2.0 -  May -  Penguin 2.0 is the fourth version of Penguin, and it affects 2.3 percent of English queries. This was not only a data refresh but an algorithm upgrade. This had been a long time coming, since it had been 6 months since the last one.

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• Domain Crowding / Diversity - May - The SERPs have been updated to further increase the amount of diversity. There were previous issues with one domain taking up too many spots on the page.

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• No Name Update - May -  There have been reports of algorithm activity but no official statement from Google.

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• Panda Update 25 -  March -  Although there is no exact proof, data indicates that a Panda update was released around March 13-14.

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• Panda Update 24 - January -  Google has released the 24th Panda update, which affects 1.2 percent of all search queries.

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2014

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• Penguin 3 -  October -  Penguin 3 began rolling out this past weekend, after a year since the last big Penguin update. In contrast to other updates, what was supposed to be a harsh update appears to be relatively light. According to Google, it affected 1% of US English queries, and the rollout took several weeks. To give you a sense of scale, the initial Penguin update affected over 3% (3x) of all queries. There have been several reports of recoveries for those who had previously been penalized and did not disavow the connection.

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• Panda 4.1 -  September -  Panda 4.1 was released earlier this week and will continue into the following week, impacting 3-5 percent of all queries (which is substantial). As a result, a larger variety of high-quality small to medium sites rank higher, which is a good thing.

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• Private Blog Networks Are Being De-Indexed - September -  Despite the fact that Google has been publicly de-indexing public blog networks for years, we are now hearing news of de-indexing of private and semi-private networks. NoHat, ViperChill, NichePursuits, and others published articles with differing viewpoints on the topic.

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• Google Drops Authorship -  August -  Following the removal of authorship images from search results, Google excluded authorship entirely from its search results.

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• SSL Is Now Considered a Ranking Factor -  August -  Google has stated that SSL-enabled sites will receive a slight ranking boost.

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• Pigeon - July - Google's local search algorithm has been revised to incorporate more conventional search signals such as information graphs, spelling correction, synonyms, and more. Although the terminology is unclear, early research suggests a substantial decrease in the use of "local packs." This update's name was made up by Search Engine Land, not to be confused with one of Google's previous April Fools' jokes. Another feature of this change is that Google is now combining 7 pack rankings with organic variables, which means that the domain authority of the organic site connected to the Google Local page will assist 7 pack rankings.

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• Panda 4.0 - May - The newest member of the panda update clan. According to sources, this was a softer update, and some sites that were previously affected by it received a boost. We've found that certain sites are being penalized for excessive on-site optimization. There has been some speculation that rankings are now taking longer than usual – up to six weeks for ties to be recognized and recalculated.

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• Update 2.0 on High-Spam Searches - May -  Prior to the release of Panda 4.0, Google released an update that targets historically spammed queries (SEO-wise). Google says the update occurred on May 20th, but it's difficult to say because Panda 4 was released about the same time.

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• No name update - March - Many rank trackers and data sources indicated significant fluctuations, but Google has not confirmed any changes.

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• Page Layout Update #3 -  February -  A new version of the page layout algorithm, which was first released in January 2012 and targeted sites with a lot of advertising, particularly above the fold (in the top section of the website).

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• Update with no name -  January -  About this time, an unnamed/unofficial update was released. This was not a formal announcement.​