Another month, another major Google algorithm update.
Or at least that’s the way it seems.
Google is always updating the algorithm. Mostly with minor changes we hardly notice. This year, however, Google has made lots of major changes to the way it ranks the pages in its index.
The Panda updates started in February this year (2011), and were eventually applied to all worldwide English queries (not just English-speaking countries) in April. In August the updates spread globally, and in every language, apart from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
The aim was to rid the SERPs of spammy pages that played the system to rank highly for the sole purpose of generating income.
Many pages Google deemed low value dropped like a stone.
And a lot of businesses in a lot of niches felt the hit and could only watch as literally overnight, there search traffic disappeared.
There was uproar from many who thought there site(s) was a valuable resource and should not be penalised. Google listened and made further changes and released more updates. Website owners, bloggers and the SEO community tried their best to locate the problems and fix the holes in their sites so they could once again feel some Google love…
…and everything settled down…
…but now there is another update to worry about.
In this new update, which Google estimates will affect 35% of all searches, freshness is key.
Direct from the announcement on the official Google blog:
- Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.
- Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.
- Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.
There are plenty of cases where results that are a few years old might still be useful for you. [fast tomato sauce recipe] certainly saved me after a call from my wife reminded me I had volunteered to make dinner! On the other hand, when I search for the [49ers score], a result that is a week old might be too old.
