Google algorithm

All Google Algorithm Update History and Changes

Do you know what Google algorithm update is and how it works? If you are a blogger then you should know about all Google Algorithms Updates. In this post, we will show you what is Google Algorithm is and how does it work? 

To rank a website, just working on SEO does not work, you have to do SEO of your website according to the update of Google algorithm.

Google keeps changing its algorithm every year so that if a visitor searches his query on Google, he can show the best and genuine results.

Sometimes your website performs well, but for some reason, the rank decreases, and the error increases because Google has changed its algorithm and you have not updated it, these reasons may decrease your website rank.

So today we will look at some important Google algorithm updates and how to improve the rank of your website using this algorithm update.

What are Google Algorithm Update?

Through the Google algorithm, Google provides accurate information on queries searched by users in its search engine. And it keeps changing from time to time every year by bringing updates in its algorithm so that its users do not have any problems and they always get new and new content and Google Algorithm also removes Black Hat SEO sites with their updates.

Many people make very good money using websites or blogs using google. But in this way, more people make the wrong money by manipulating google algorithms.

Therefore Google keeps updating the algorithm frequently and no one knows when the update happened. Whatever people search on google, they get good results due to these updates.

Google’s search engine algorithm has several ranking signals that show the correct web page or content on the first page of the search engine result page (SERP).

Google keeps updating small pieces every year, which we do not know about, but some big algorithms play a very important role, we will know today.

How Google Algorithm Works

To get a better understanding of how the Google algorithm works, you must first understand how the Google search engine works.

Only then will you know how the Google algorithm performs, let us see what steps Google follows.

Google uses 4 methods for this.

Crawling Web Pages: First of all, Google Spider (Googlebot) crawls billions of web pages on the Internet.

Analyze page content: Then analyze the pages that are available on the Internet and the webserver.

Store in content: After that Google saves all those pages in its store.

Filter (according to Ranking Algorithms): Their ranking is then determined by filtering according to the Google algorithm.

After this Google algorithm is used which checks the rank of web pages in the search engine. Let’s know about it.

The Google algorithm closely examines indexed web pages and looks at which content is better and which is at the top of them all.

For this, he determines the rank of pages according to many SEO factors such as website content quality, domain authority, backlinks.

Google ranks algorithmic web pages by not one but thousands of SEO Factors and Algorithms Updates.

Google Algorithm Update is not one but thousands. As I mentioned above, Google makes thousands of updates to its algorithm every year.

18 Types of Google Algorithm Update

  1. Panda Update
  2. Penguin Update
  3. Pirate Update
  4. Hummingbird Update
  5. Pigeon Update
  6. Mobile Friendly Update
  7. RankBrain Algorithm
  8. Possum Update
  9. Fred Update
  10. Speed Update
  11. Medic Core Update
  12. BERT
  13. Mobile-First Indexing
  14. Smith
  15. Passage Ranking Update
  16. Product Reviews Update
  17. Page Experience Update
  18. June 2021 Broad Core Update
  19. July 2021 Broad Core Update
  20. Spam Update
  21. Page Title Generation Policy
  22. Broad Core Update(Nov 2021)

Today we will see the most important updates we need in the daily bloggers’ life.

Panda Update 

The Panda update was launched in 2011 to avoid thin content. 

A common trend at that time was to use content forums, article spinner trends, sold on their forums using websites and software.

Content forums and article spinners used words to create garbage content in which keywords were added forcibly, not to read those content, but to manipulate search engines. 

The Panda update has halted the ranking of websites that provide spammy, copied, low-quality content. 

A website that removes low-quality content and provides high-quality content will be ranked. But Panda was not a one-time action, Google has made it part of its algorithm. 

If even today your website uses copy and spinner content, the Panda algorithm will not let it rank and your content will not rank if you have written content that already exists on thousands of websites.

Penguin Update

Penguin update was launched in 2012. With the Penguin update, Google decreased the website rank of those who use bad, spammy, over-optimized backlinks. Google handled spammy content through the Panda update. 

But to manipulate the search engine there are two parts: spammy content and spammy backlinks. 

So the Penguin update removed this spammy backlink. Penguin’s update was not to punish the websites that are using bad backlinks but to enhance and affect the quality of the backlinks. 

Before the Penguin update, it was very easy to rank websites using backlinks. PBN links were made, Link pyramid service was sold, people who could not make PBN links used to buy from others. 

After the Penguin update, the websites using such links were downgraded and the weight of the backlinks was also worked out. 

Around 4 updates of the Penguin were launched and in 2016 this update became part of the core algorithm. In today’s date, Google does not give much importance to backlinks but instead gives more importance to quality.

Pirate Update

The google pirate algorithm was launched in 2012. This update focuses mostly on copied content or pirated content.

Pirate Alogothim stated that you cannot sell other website products on your website without his permission.

Other products like songs, movies, themes, software and you cannot download this product, etc. If you have permission from the owners of that website then you can sell this product.

But if you try to sell those products without permission, Google will block your website.

Hummingbird Update

Hummingbird update was launched in 2013 to avoid keyword stuffing.

These updates have been launched to prevent keyword stuffing in the content and improve the quality of the content.

Hummingbird improved both the quality and speed of the search engine. 

Due to the Hummingbird update, Google reduced the effect of having a particular keyword on the page or how many times, and such pages also started to rank for a particular keyword that may not be used on that page. 

But the result is useful. One term which is over-SEO optimized page has been reduced to its effect, which was previously very well known as keyword density, still, a lot of people focus on keyword density. 

That Hummingbird update has removed keyword density. 

After the Hummingbird update, the search user’s impact began to get more important. Now even if the keyword is not being repeated on a single page, that page can still be ranked for that keyword if the content is useful. 

If you too focus more on the frequency of keywords while ranking content and do keyword research in an old way that does not have intent and focus, then your site can suffer the loss of Hummingbird updates.

Pigeon Update

Pigeon algorithm was launched in 2014, this update is used to improve and make Google listings better for Google My Business.

It provided more useful, relevant, and accurate local search results that are more closely linked to traditional web search ranking signals.

This algorithm keeps improving the distance and location ranking parameters there.

Suppose you type a digital marketing course with me and some 5 to 6 results come to the top, but how does Google rank this website.

Google uses the Pigeon algorithm to rank the position of this website. This algorithm finds the closest search result from your location.

Mobile Friendly Update

This algorithm was launched in 2015 for mobile-friendly pages.

Google has released an important new Mobile-friendly algorithm designed to promote mobile-friendly pages in Google mobile search results.

Mostly known as mobilegeddon, but sometimes also called mobile apocalypse. Mopocalypse or Mobocalypse.

If you are using AMP then this algorithm will definitely help you in ranking mobile-friendly pages.

This was not just an algorithm update, it was a culture change and Google was about to move the market.

Google decided to pivot and adapt consumer behavior and this was Google’s right decision.

RankBrain Update

Rankbrain was launched in 1025 to help Google to understand a query that was not previously used. 

It is a machine learning algorithm that helps the system based on the already existing data, which is a unique search query that has never been done before. What is his meaning and what is his intent actually. 

RankBrane is one of Google’s most important ranking signals. Google does not announce the pattern of RankBrine publically, but the query done on Google is 15% unique and it helps Google to understand it.

Possum Update

The Possum update was launched in September 2016. This algorithm uses for local business, if your business is in a country or city then you need to submit your website to local listings or use related keywords in your city.

For example, if you have a digital marketing agency in Mumbai, then you should add keywords that get traffic from your city. Such as “Best Digital Marketing Agency near me”, “Digital Marketing course near me”, “SEO course in Mumbai or near me“

Submitting your website to a local listing will allow users to contact you and you may also get a lot of traffic. This algorithm is not followed for blogs, if it is your business, then you have to implement this thing.

Fred Update

The FRED algorithm was launched in March 2017. This algorithm works on monetization, if you are using too many advertisements on your website, then this algorithm will affect your ranking.

This seems to be a negative effect in Google’s eyes, Google thinks that you have created this blog just to make money that is not providing the right information to the visitors.

Do not use too many advertisements on your website, pay attention to the intent of the user what they need, Google will rank you higher if you meet the requirement of visitors that they want.

Speed Update

The page speed update was launched in 2018. This update will focus only on mobile pages on how it is working on mobile devices such as layouts, clickable elements, images, text formats, etc.

You know that today everyone has a smartphone and Google has noticed that most of the traffic comes from mobile devices, so Google is now focusing on mobile page speed.

If you want to increase the speed of mobile, then optimize your image, JavaScript, CSS, video, text. Do not use animation, sliders, large banners, avoid this big element then you can increase the speed.

Medic Core Update

The Medic core update was launched in August 2019. This update will focus on health, fitness, and finance websites.

If your website is related to fitness, health, or finance, then Google will keep a close watch on this type of website. Because many times people provide wrong information and products to the users.

Whether or not the information you provide to users is true. What kind of product you are selling to users, whether the product is genuine or not. If you sell false information publicly then Google will ban your website.

BERT Update

Bert update was launched in Oct 2019. This algorithm focuses on user intent.

Understanding any language is a difficult task for search engines and normal computer systems. Because they not only know the language but also have to understand the culture, references, conditions, and emotions. So the Burt algorithm compiles all these things and according to that we see the result

The Bert algorithm is a natural language processing model based on Google’s neural network. Burt helps computer systems understand the meaning of any word naturally. Whatever the user searches, Bert helps Google understand that query and helps Google show related content.

Write as you were writing useful content. Bert’s job is to understand only the words discovered. Burt applies only to words typed on search engines. You do not need to do anything with your content or website.

Mobile-First Indexing

The mobile-first indexing update was launched in July 2019 and rolled out in 2020.

Mobile-first indexing means a very mobile-friendly site, users can easily view it from their mobile, and this is why Google indexes these sites more quickly. 

Considering the consumption of users, Google found that most of the users prefer to browse the internet from their mobile. 

In such a situation, whatever sites are more mobile-friendly, they provide users a better browsing experience. Therefore, Google also indexes such sites as soon as possible. Also, in terms of ranking, the mobile version of your website is more important for indexing.

If you monitor the crawl bot traffic of your site you will find that the traffic of the smartphone Googlebot has increased significantly and the cached versions of the pages are often the mobile version of the page.

 It is called “mobile-first” because it is not a mobile-only index: for example, even if a site does not have a mobile-friendly version, the desktop site is also indexed.

But due to the lack of a mobile-friendly experience, affects your site’s ranking very negatively, and a site with a better mobile experience gets a higher ranking boost, even if searchers are not on the desktop.

Smith Update

Smith Algorithm update was launched in 2020. The full form of smith is Siamese Multi-Depth Transformer-Based Hierarchical Encoder.

This algorithm helps Google understand the big pages of the website. By the way, if you have heard about BERT Algorithm, then you can read the article here on BERT.

The BERT Algorithm shows the meaning of that line with only one line in front and behind the word, but when it comes to a big paragraph, it takes a lot of time, so Smith Algorithm can do it in a few seconds. 

Smith Algorithm finds the answer to the question in very few paragraphs within a few seconds and can easily understand the word relation that is formed between those paragraphs, it is called Smith Algorithm.

Smith algorithm works in 2 ways

The first model works at the sentence level, meaning that a longer paragraph divides several sentences into blocks.

The second model works at the document level, meaning that it helps in understanding the meaning of the sentences.

What will be the effect of the Smith algorithm?

Now Google will be able to understand long paragraphs or articles easily and thoroughly and will also read other related pages of those articles or pages together and find out what other information is giving that page or article. And will help Google to understand the quality of the content of the article.

This will have an impact on those who deliberately turn over articles and use words without meaning, in the course of writing long articles without giving any good information.

Passage Ranking Update

Google launched this update in February 2021. This update will read paragraphs of your content and show them in search results.

If you optimize keywords in your content the right way, then Google will show your paragraph in search results.

Google Boat downloads and analyzes your page, so your content gets a score due to the content of your page. 

But all the factors influence that score like the experience of your page, how many outbound links are there, which type of inbound links are there, images, broken links, etc. After deciding all this, the rank of your page is decided.

If you have written a paragraph in the content that matches the user’s intent, then Google can show that paragraph in the search result.

Product Reviews Update

The product review update was launched in April 2021. This update will focus on the reviews of the eCommerce website.

If you have a product or service-based website then the user provides you reviews based on the quality of your product.

Google will rank your website based on these reviews.

If you got reviews like a good product, good, best product, good service, then Google would not consider these types of reviews. Because in this review Google will not be able to search properly about your product description.

Product review update

If your users do not provide you with proper reviews then you can mail your users to provide good and in-depth knowledge reviews about that product. Then Google will consider this review.

Add review schema to that product, this will help you rank faster on Google.

Page Experience Update

Google launched a new update on June 2021 for mobile-first indexing that is page experience update also called Core Web Vitals.

You know that most of the searches come from mobile devices that’s why google started crawling your site using Smartphonebot and mostly focusing on mobile speed.

I write a detailed guide on How to Improve Core Web Vitals in that you can also find about LCP, CLS, FID read all by clicking this link.

June 2021 Broad Core Update

This is a major update from Google, which means it’s not targeting anything specific about your site. This is like an overall algorithmic update, which means that all metrics on your site will be analyzed.

So it’s not just about the content, it’s not just about the links, it’s about the overall quality of your site. You shouldn’t do anything drastic here.

If you’ve had a hit on your site, your traffic may have dropped, your ranking may have shifted; Don’t worry too much about it right now because, in the first few weeks of any kind of core update or algorithmic update from Google, you don’t need to panic.

This may sound like an emergency, but the thing is, a lot of things will be changing and Google’s algorithms will try and test different things, sometimes with Google working on improving its search engine for users. 

So on any google update don’t change anything from your website at least in 2 to 3 weeks. You can take action if you think your ranking is still going down.

That’s why it’s important not to do anything drastic here. And here’s the thing with Google’s core algorithmic update; It’s all about the overall quality of the site.

July 2021 Broad Core Update

So, as if one core update this year wasn’t enough, Google has said that they are going to release another update in July 2021. So this year’s first core update was in June. Now there’s another one coming in July, and it’s really important to understand how these major updates work, as it can affect your site.

This can hurt your ranking. It can improve your ranking. So you should understand how they work, what they mean for your site, and how they can affect your site’s SEO.

Now, the thing is, these core updates can be pretty brutal. They can affect your entire site. For example, the December 2020 core update affected thousands of sites, and many people complained that their traffic dropped overnight and they never really recovered.

So, how does this core update work? How will they affect your site? How will they change your ranking on Google?

So first let us know what is Google Core Updates? What is the July Core Update about? Well, basically almost every day, Google makes minor updates to the algorithm, and pretty much nobody notices, right? So these changes are very incremental.

Every time major updates are released that have a huge impact and can affect your entire site.

Basically, the way to think about the main update is like reviewing a list of the top 100 movies, right? So if you made a list of the best movies ever in 2015, and you made a list of top 100 movies, it could be very different from the list of movies that are in the top 100 in 2020.

So if you get hit by a core update, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you did anything wrong. 

It’s just a fact that something better has come out, and something is released, and so all the results on that list, you know, like Google’s rankings or the top 100 movies list are being reviewed and changed and updated. This means that the ranking of your website may drop.

What to do:

If it hits you in the first broad core update so don’t panic it will be fixed in another July update. If your site traffic is still decreasing in both these updates, then follow this step to improve the result.

  • First check your search console, last 3 months performance tab. If it is still going down then it means you are affected by this update.
  • Check your title, meta, link and change it
  • Improve your introduction
  • Check your keywords or add new keywords
  • Create user friendly content
  • Make sure it matches the users intent

But if you still hit 3 to 4 weeks after launching this broad core update then do this step another wise your ok don’t do anything.

My site also lost more traffic but it recovered automatically after the second broad core update. So do not panic and don’t make any changes at least 3 weeks after the update rolled out.

Spam update 26 July

Google launched a new link spam update on July 26, this update will affect most affiliate links and guest post websites.

Everyone who does business under the name of Links Google knows that, that’s why they launched this update to focus on quality links and sponsored links.

It’s a simple update, you just need to convert your links to sponsored links.

This update is mainly for affiliate links and guest post websites, if you’re selling affiliate products then make sure to change the sponsored links and if your website accepts guest posts then change the sponsored links.

Don’t worry about the old link, you have time for that, but after July 26 you need to make sure that it is changed fast, or you will get a manual penalty by google.

What to do:

Link before update:

<a href=”https://example.com”rel=”nofollow”></a>

Link after update:

<a href=”https://example.com”rel=”sponsored nofollow”></a>(no follow link)

Or

<a href=”https://example.com”rel=”Sponsored”></a>(follow link)

If you change it to Sponsored you’re all done.

Title Tag Generation Policy

In August 2021 Google launched its Title Tag Generation Policy in this update he will rewrite your Title Tag.

Google will choose the best Title Tag from your content like from subheadings, meta descriptions, and image alt tag, etc.

It does not mean your written Title tag is not working now. Depending on the user query Google picks a better Title from your article.

I write a detailed article on how Google picks your Title from Content read by clicking here.

Broad Core Update (November 2021)

A major core upgrade would be issued later that day, according to Google Search Central on Twitter. They directed webmasters to their August 2019 documentation on what site owners need to know about core changes.

The following are Google’s recommendations for a large core algorithm update:

  • Expect widespread repercussions, such as increases or decreases in search rankings.
  • Core updates are “wide” in that they don’t focus on a specific issue. Rather, they’re intended to improve Google’s entire system.
  • Pages that lose rankings aren’t penalized; instead, they’re appraised against other web material published since the prior update.
  • The easiest method to deal with the impact of a core algorithm upgrade is to focus on creating the greatest possible content.
  • Every few months, the core is updated. Some sites may not be able to recover from one update until the next one is released.
  • Improvements do not imply that the situation will improve. Choosing not to make any changes, on the other hand, will almost certainly result in no recovery.
Conclusion :

In this article, we understand the basic knowledge of Google algorithm update. There are more Google algorithms but this is the main update you should know about.

I hope you have understood this article, if you have any suggestions or questions for me, you can ask me in the comment box.

If you liked this article, then share it with your friends.

2021-05-23

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