Last week, Google confirmed that they had rolled out a series of algorithmic updates on February 2012. With over 40 reported changes, it marked one of Google's largest updates in recent months and, just like the release of Panda 3.2 in January 2011, the SEO world is now bracing itself for the effects.
It's almost impossible to sum up the full scale effects of these changes here and now. However, reading between the lines, there are a few that seem especially noteworthy that will no doubt produce a lot of speculation among SEO companies and search marketers worldwide.
Here’s a quick look at the stand out ones for us.
Link Evaluation:
One to no doubt cause an stir and prompt discussion amongst us all is Google's suggestion that an evaluation signal it has been using for many years, has simply been removed.
What Google says: 'We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often re-architect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.'
Google (as usual) is remaining tight lipped about what this actually means; however, any suggestion that something that has been used for years is simply 'turned off' is bound to pose some interesting problems with any long standing and established linking strategy.
Local Rankings: Codename “Venice”
Another update that Google have openly discussed along with Link Evaluation concerns traditional algorithmic ranking factors and how they are now playing a much bigger part in triggering local search results.
What Google says: 'This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
Traditional SEO has begun to play a much bigger part in Google’s local search since it launched Places Search in the later part of 2010. This announcement certainly seems to suggest that Google is beginning slowly turn up the dial on this.
In addition, Google also suggests that local results are also being improved due to a “new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably . . . now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.”
If there was any doubt as to the focus of the latest Panda update, Google sums it up perfectly.
'Each individual change is subtle and important, and over time they add up to a radically improved search engine.'
CZUFD765FFAV
It's almost impossible to sum up the full scale effects of these changes here and now. However, reading between the lines, there are a few that seem especially noteworthy that will no doubt produce a lot of speculation among SEO companies and search marketers worldwide.
Here’s a quick look at the stand out ones for us.
Link Evaluation:
One to no doubt cause an stir and prompt discussion amongst us all is Google's suggestion that an evaluation signal it has been using for many years, has simply been removed.
What Google says: 'We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often re-architect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.'
Google (as usual) is remaining tight lipped about what this actually means; however, any suggestion that something that has been used for years is simply 'turned off' is bound to pose some interesting problems with any long standing and established linking strategy.
Local Rankings: Codename “Venice”
Another update that Google have openly discussed along with Link Evaluation concerns traditional algorithmic ranking factors and how they are now playing a much bigger part in triggering local search results.
What Google says: 'This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
Traditional SEO has begun to play a much bigger part in Google’s local search since it launched Places Search in the later part of 2010. This announcement certainly seems to suggest that Google is beginning slowly turn up the dial on this.
In addition, Google also suggests that local results are also being improved due to a “new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably . . . now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.”
If there was any doubt as to the focus of the latest Panda update, Google sums it up perfectly.
'Each individual change is subtle and important, and over time they add up to a radically improved search engine.'
CZUFD765FFAV
Comments
