Are you familiar with the algorithm updates of Google? Have you heard of Penguin, Panda, Knowledge Graph, Hummingbird, and Pigeon? Unless you are a seasoned search engine optimisation or SEO professional, you might not be extremely familiar with the most important aspects of Google’s numerous algorithm updates. If you want to know more about the
most notable algorithm updates in the past five years and how it is significant to marketers, then read on.
The first one on the list is the algorithm known as Panda. The main purpose of this is to add high-quality content for you website, which stops abusive sites in the process. Panda influenced content farms, which are sites that generate a large amount of original and low-quality content, to have a thinner content and restrict certain pages that have a poor ad-to-content ratio. According to SEO professionals there have been 25 tracked updates for this and Panda 4.0 is the latest one to date.
Then there’s Penguin which targeted websites that uses SEO techniques that interferes with Google’s quality guidelines. These violations include keywords stuffing (which is the process of overusing of keywords or phone numbers within an online content), link schemes (the buying and selling of links, unnatural links, and forum comments with signature links), and other methods of influencing the system to further improve search rankings. With the help of Penguin, there have been only a three percent change on queries and it has greatly impacted websites accessing an unjust SEO gain. There have been four subsequent updates to Penguin and it had made an impact on the SEO community.
The third one is the Knowledge Graph. This is an element that has a strong importance on the overall search results page. The basic understanding of this algorithm is that words are a better representation of things and that search results should provide better data rather than basic links to pages. Basically it is represented with a picture or a map with a description and links at the top right or top centre of the search results. The second update of the Knowledge Graph has increased its results by fifty percent. It comes from a variety of sources, so it is better to have a completed Google Plus account profile which includes recent posts and reviews.
The fourth one is known as the Hummingbird search algorithm, which have had the largest change since the Caffeine update in June of 2010. It has the best parts from its predecessor, but it also added in new elements that are specially designed to show the needs of the search. The basic idea is that facts and pages are connected in ways that is beyond explicit matches of keywords.
Lastly there is the Pigeon, which had a huge impact on the local search results. It has been able to tie-in local results more closely to traditional search ranking signals, which improves the distance and ranking parameters. This turns the results into three-packs or three local results and even fewer seven-packs. This significant change had also been able to favour directory websites and emphasises local businesses rather than local brands.
Those are the major search algorithms. Understanding these is vital to the search performance of the browser and it is quipped to fulfil the rules held by Google.
