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16 of the Biggest Google Algorithm Updates that Have Given SEOs Headaches

March 18, 2016 No Comments

Featured article by Patrick Strauss, SEO Expert

Google is the biggest search engine in the world. Actually, Google is a brand in its entirety. If you want to search for anything, you will definitely use Google. It is such a great searching tool that it is now a verb. It is common to hear people say, “I will just Google it”. For the company to get to this point, they have had to go through multiple updates over the years. It is hard to believe that there was a time that Google was just another search engine on the worldwide web. However, everyone starts somewhere, right? Google did exactly that.

The only difference between Google and most search engines is that they are very keen on improving user experience. The Google search algorithm has seen an innumerable lot of updates and changes to make it even better. This is all in a bid to please the users. No doubt people are very pleased because they use Google for just about everything in their lives. Right now websites and blogs strive to impress Google, which in turn is working to ensure that its users are getting the most from it.

Before Google became what it is

Google did not just burst into the scene. It has been around since 1999. Nonetheless, it was not until 2002 that the search engine became popular being used in all corners of the planet. This was after the company made their first algorithm update that was named ‘Boston’. The update saw Google become such a hit across America and eventually the globe. Everyone was shifting from Yahoo to Google.

The main target of the company has always been to become the go-to site for all information in the world. If you get some time you can read the foundation of Google. It started out in some university dorm room as a project of a couple of students. They had one thing in mind- to put all of the world’s information in one location that people can access it from. They started out by creating the search algorithm. It is still the same algorithm that is being used today but it has undergone so many updates that it has become utterly unrecognizable from its initial start.

The most recent update ‘Rankbrain’ was done in October of 2015. This algorithm update, like all the others before it, caused web developers, owners and marketers to change some of the tactics that they have been employing. Here is a brief look at each of the most popular Google algorithm updatesthat have been made since the year 2002 to date. Before doing so, it is worth pointing out that Google’s search principles continue changing every few months. Minor tweaks are made but they might not have such a huge effect on your website. With that said, the major updates include:

1. 2002’s big shuffle

Actually not much is documented about this shuffle but then it was bigger than the monthly PageRank and Google Dance updates. This major shuffle took place before ‘Boston’ was done. Boston is the first named update that Google made to its search algorithm. During the fall season of 2002 though, Google made multiple and huge changes to their algorithm.

2. September 2003 Supplemental Index

The goal of this update was to index more documents while at the same time ensuring that performance was at its best. To avoid sacrificing performance (which Google is an avid fan of) they split off some results into what they called the ‘supplemental’ index.

3. Big Daddy

This was not really a software update but rather a case of modifying infrastructure. The project started out in December 2005 and was summarized some time March of 2006. This modification changed how Google handled URL canonicalization, redirects 301/302 and several other issues of technical quality.

4. 2007 Universal search

It was in 2007 May that Google unveiled the universal search. This is not your typical kind of Google update. It integrated the traditional search results with images, news, videos, local and several other verticals. This dramatically changed the algorithm format.

5. 2008 Suggestion box

The dropdown list of suggested searches that you get to see nowadays was added into the algorithm in August 2008. This update came along with a major change to the company’s logo and the homepage. As you type your query in the search box, Google Suggest presents you with several suggested searches.

6. Caffeine of 2009

Caffeine is similar to Big Daddy. It was an intense update to the infrastructure. The goal of this update was to increase the index, speed up crawling and to integrate indexation and ranking in almost real time. It was after this update that Google started telling people how many results it has found for their queries and the amount of time it took to do that. The update ran a year ending in June 2010.

7. May Day in 2010

From late April through to early May, webmasters began noticing great losses in their long-tail traffic. It was later confirmed that May Day was an algorithm update that was meant to impact this kind of traffic.

8. Social Signals 2010

In December the same year Google and its fellow search engine Bing confirmed that they employ social signals in ranking. They said that they use data from Facebook and Twitter plus other social sites to determine ranking.

9. Panda 2011

This update was major and it devastated many sites. Panda was an update that was meant to crack down on thin content, content farms, websites with high ad-to-content ratios and a whole lot of other issues relating to quality.

10. Panda 2.0 2011

In April 2011, Google unleashed the Panda update to all English queries across the world. There was addition of new signals as well.

11. Query Encryption 2011

Later on in October 2011 Google announced that they would start encrypting queries. This was meant for privacy matters. It had an impact on organic keyword referral data with the result being ‘not provided’ for some organic traffic.

12. Penguin

This is the other major update that came in 2012. It adjusted several spam factors such as keyword stuffing.

13. Phantom

It is called Phantom because Google did not confirm it but around May 2013 many sites a lost traffic. The losses were huge and this led to claims of an update to the algorithm.

14. Hummingbird

This one was confirmed by Google in late September 2013. However, according to Google’s suggestion, it had rolled out about a month before the announcement.

15. Pigeon

Pigeon came to rock the world of local SEO. It modified how some local results were being handled as well as the interpretation of local cue. It came in 2014 July.

16. Rankbrain

Before Google announced RankBrain in October 2015, the company had stated that they would be making a modification to the Panda algorithm. It was not anything major though. In October they went on to reveal that machine learning was an integral part of the algorithm for several months. It contributed to the third most influential ranking factor- RankBrain.

Author Bio

Patrick Strauss is an SEO expert. He has been tracking the major Google algorithm updates that have been changing the SEO world for years.

 

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