Google Algorithm and Its History
Google Algorithms:-
Google Panda
Date: February 24, 2011
Hazards: Duplicate, plagiarized or thin content; user-generated spam; keyword stuffing.
How it works: The Panda algorithm update assigns a so-called “quality score” to web pages. This score is then used as a ranking factor. Initially, the effects of Panda were mild, but in January 2016 it was permanently incorporated into Google’s core algorithm. Since then, update rollouts have become more frequent, so both Panda penalties and recoveries now happen faster.
No Multiple Pages with the Same Keyword
Get Rid of Auto-generated Content
No Pages with 1-2 Paragraphs of Text Only
No Scraped Content
Panda Likes New Content
Be Careful with Affiliate Links and Ads
Too Many Outbound Links with Keywords are bad
Penguin
Date: April 24, 2012
Hazards: Spammy or irrelevant links; links with over-optimized anchor text.
How it works: Google Penguin’s objective is to down-rank sites whose backlinks look unnatural. This update put an end to low-effort link building, like buying links from link farms and PBNs.
Keyword stuffing
Spammy links
low-quality links
Over-optimization
Google’s Exact Match Domain Algorithm Update(EMD)
Date: 2012
Google’s EMD algorithm update focused on ridding the SERPs of spammy or low-quality exact match domains.
The EMD, or Exact Match Domain update, was a 2012 Google algorithm update that targeted exactly what it is named: exact match domain names.
The intent behind this update was not to target exact match domain names exclusively but to target sites with the following combination of spammy tactics: exact match domains that were also poor quality sites with thin content.
Hummingbird
Date: August 22, 2013
Hazards: Keyword stuffing; low-quality content.
How it works: The Hummingbird algorithm helps Google better interpret search queries and provide results that match searcher intent (as opposed to the individual terms within the query). While keywords continue to be important, the Hummingbird algorithm makes it possible for a page to rank for a query, even if it doesn’t contain the exact words the searcher entered. This is achieved with the help of natural language processing that relies on latent semantic indexing, co-occurring terms, and synonyms.
Keyword stuffing
Knowledge graph facts
Effectiveness of Long-tail keywords
Payday Update
Launched on June 11, 2013
The “Payday Update” was a new algorithm targeted at cleaning up search results for traditionally “spammy queries” such as [payday loan], pornographic, and other heavily spammed queries
Black Hat SEO or spamdexing
Google Pigeon Update
July 24, 2014
Pigeon Update” is an algorithm to provide more useful, relevant, and accurate local search results that are tied more closely to traditional web search ranking signals. Google stated that this new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters
Location Matters More Than Ever
Don’t Over-Optimize Your Website
Strong Domains Matter more
Mobilegeddon (Mobile)
Date: April 21, 2015
Hazards: Lack of a mobile version of the page; poor mobile usability.
How it works: This, and subsequent mobile search updates (2018, 2020) have shifted the focus from a desktop to a mobile version of your website. Today, Google ranks all websites based on how fast and user-friendly their mobile versions are.
When it comes to searching on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant and timely results, no matter if the information lives on mobile-friendly web pages or apps.
Affects only search rankings on mobile devices.
Affects search results in all languages globally.
Applies to individual pages, not entire websites.
RankBrain
Date: October 26, 2015
Hazards: Lack of query-specific relevance; shallow content; poor UX.
How it works: RankBrain is a part of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm. It is a machine learning system that helps Google understand the meaning behind queries and serve best-matching search results in response to those queries. Google calls RankBrain the third most important ranking factor.
While we don’t know the exact formula behind this major update, the consensus is that RankBrain is responsible for customizing a user’s Google search results. Basically, Google goes beyond a person’s search query and takes into account the larger context, like synonyms, implied words, and personal search history.
Understanding search queries (keywords)
Measuring how people interact with the results (user satisfaction)
Fred
Date: March 7-8 of 2017
Basically? All unnamed updates related to quality are now “Fred.”
Fred is not a singular algorithm update that targets a single or set of common issues, a “hit” by Fred (all unnamed updates going forward) will only be known to you if other SEO professionals note it and talk about it as well.
Medic
Date: May 4, 2018
Hazards: Lack of authority on YMYL websites; weak E-A-T signals.
How it works: The Google Medic update seemed to disproportionately affect medical websites as well as other websites that have to do with potentially life-altering decisions (finance, law, education). Although not explicitly confirmed, Google representatives have hinted that the update implemented some of the E-A-T (expertise, authority, trust) signals from the Quality Rater Guidelines document
Site Diversity Update
June 6, 2019
Google pre-announced a "site diversity" update, claiming it would improve situations where sites had more than two organic listings. Moz data showed that, while the update did marginally improve SERPs with 3-5 duplicate sites on page one, the impact was relatively small.
The ratio of unique sub-domains to total organic results on the page
Google search update aims to show more diverse results from different domain names (SEL)
Bert
Date: October 22, 2019
Hazards: Poorly written content; lack of focus; lack of context.
How it works: This Google algorithm update uses natural language processing technology to better understand search queries, interpret text, identify entities and relationships between entities. We’ve seen Panda, Hummingbird and RankBrain updates move away from keywords, and the BERT update is the culmination of this effort — it allows Google to understand much more nuance in both queries and search results.
Core Updates
Date: 2017-present
How it works: As far back as 2017, Google has started to refer to bigger updates as Google core updates. Since then, there is even less transparency about what those updates are and which parts of search they are intended to improve. SEOs would often track post-update ranking shifts and try to figure out what exactly has changed, but there is rarely a conclusive observation. It is likely that Google core updates are just improvements on previous Google updates or perhaps bundles of smaller updates tied together.
Featured Snippet De-duping
January 22, 2020
Google announced that URLs in Featured Snippets would no longer be appearing as traditional organic results, in line with Google's philosophy that a Featured Snippet is a promoted organic result. This had significant implications for rank-tracking and organic CTR.
Position Zero Is Dead; Long Live Position Zero (Moz)
Google’s Featured Snippet-Apocalypse, FAQ Schema, No Snippet & Max Snippets Tags
All Google Algorithm Updates
Google Top Heavy Update
Google EMD (Exact Match Domain) Update
Google Pirate Update
Google Payday Update
Google Pigeon Update
Google Penguin Update
Google Panda Update
Google Mobile Friendly Update
Google Hummingbird
January 2018 Core Update
Google Mobile-Friendly Algorithm
Google RankBrain Algorithm
Google Local September 2016 Possum Update
Google Fred Update – unconfirmed March 2017 update
Google Local August 2017 Hawk Update
December 2017 Core Update
March 2018 Core Update
April 2018 Core Update
August 2018 Core Update aka Medic Update
March 2019 Core Update
June 2019 Core Update
September 2019 Core Update
Google BERT Natural Language Processing Update
January 2020 Core Update
May 2020 Core Update