Each year Google changes its search algorithm hundreds of times. While most of these changes are minor, every few months Google rolls out a “major” algorithmic update that affects search results in a significant way.
For search marketers, knowing the dates of these Google algorithm updates can help explain fluctuations in rankings and organic website traffic. Below, we’ve listed the history of Google’s algorithm changes that had the biggest impact on search results. Understanding these updates can be critical to search engine optimization.
Panda 4.1
SEPTEMBER 23, 2014
Panda 4.1 is a significant update to the Panda algorithm that targets low quality content with greater precision. This update is expected to identify low-quality content and result in greater diversity of higher rankings for small and medium-sized sites containing good quality content. It is a gradual global roll-out expected to affect approximately 3-5% of queries.
Google’s official announcement was made by Pierre Far on Google Plus.
Providing interesting insight, Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea walks readers through the logic of a recent Google patent application that may be behind this latest Panda update.
The Webmaster World forum chat has been a mix of positive and negative with most medium size businesses doing well, but some smaller businesses suffering drops in SERPs.
Google Authorship Removed
AUGUST 28, 2014
For months Google has been analyzing Authorship from a user’s perspective and effectiveness for potential clicks. With this update Authors lost their edge as Google decided to stop showing authorship in search results.
HTTPS Update
AUGUST 06, 2014
HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure) is the new ranking signal. According to Google, secure sites may be given a ranking boost for the added security.
Google Local Algorithm Update
JULY 24, 2014
Google launched an update to their local search algorithm to help them provide more accurate and relevant local search results.
The chat in the Webmaster World Local Search Forum suggests that the update was causing inconsistent results, with “major flux” still occurring a week after the rollout.
Small Business Trends provides an analysis of how this update affects local businesses.
Payday Loan Algorithm 3.0
JUNE 12, 2014
Google rolled out an update to their PayDay Loan Spam Algorithm. Version 3.0 targets the queries for ‘payday loans’, ‘casinos’, ‘accident claims’ and a variety of others that return an excessive number of web spam results.
Google’s Matt Cutts announced this algorithm update on Twitter.
Matt Southern reported in Search Engine Journal that “unless you’re running a site in a niche that Google would consider to be ‘very spammy’, there is very little for you to be personally worried about with this update.”
Panda 4.0
MAY 20, 2014
Our Rank Risk Index has been showing sharp fluctuations in recent weeks causing lots of chatter in SEO and webmaster forums. By mid-May we started to see a relative calm, but suddenly the red alert went up again and shortly after that Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google had launched Panda 4.0 and plans to be rolling out more updates.
The goal of Panda has been to penalize poor content quality and scraper sites, while boosting sites with great content up in the SERPs and thereby providing Google users with high quality results.
Google’s Matt Cutts announced Panda 4.0 on Twitter.
Tim Worstall shares in Forbes his take on this Evolution In Action; Google’s New Panda 4.0 Rollout