What are Google Algorithm Updates?

Every day Google makes new changes to its ranking algorithm in which some are major changes and some minor. Google occasionally rolls out a major algorithmic update to give the best results and user experience by improving your ranking.

Google’s algorithm for SEO uses a combination of algorithms and numerous ranking signals like accuracy and relevancy of webpage content so that it can deliver the best possible results on its search engine result pages (SERP).

Google Algorithm Updates

1. Fred
2. Mobilegeddon
3. RankBrain
4. Panda
5. Penguin
6. Hummingbird
7. Pigeon
8. EMD (Exact Match Domain)

Fred –

Launch date: March 8, 2017

Hazards: Thin, affiliate-heavy or ad-centered content

Google’s Fred update targets those websites that violate Google’s webmaster guideline. Fred targets those websites and blogs that are created for generating revenue by posting low-quality content or black-hat tactics. This includes an overload on ads, low-value content, and little added user benefits.

Mobilegeddon –

Launch date: April 21, 2015

Hazards: Lack of a mobile version of the page; poor mobile usability

Mobile (Mobilegeddon) update targets to rank well, those are mobile-friendly websites. Mobilegeddon update ensures that mobile-friendly websites rank at top of the mobile search rather than pages not optimized for mobile.

Google search console helps you to test and improve your website for a mobile version. You can see which aspects of your page’s need to improve for mobile-friendly.

RankBrain –

Launch date: October 26, 2015

Hazards: Lack of query-specific relevance features; shallow content; poor UX

RankBrain is a machine-learning artificial intelligence system that helps Google process some of its search results, in particular, rare or one-of-a-kind queries.
RankBrain helps Google to understand the meaning behind queries, and serve best-matching search results in response to those queries.

Panda -

Launch date: February 24, 2011

Hazards: Duplicate, plagiarized or thin content; user-generated spam; keyword stuffing
Google’s Panda updates penalize sites with poor quality, duplicate, and thin content. Google diminish ranking, those who practice keyword stuffing or posting duplicate content also rewards high-quality content websites.

Penguin –

Launch date: April 24, 2012

Hazards: Spammy or irrelevant links; links with over-optimized anchor text

Penguin’s objective is to deals with bad backlinks and downranks of those websites. Penguin Update catches those sites deemed to be spamming its search results, in particular, those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings.

Hummingbird –

Launch date: August 22, 2013

Hazards: Keyword stuffing; low-quality content

Its name was derived from the speed and accuracy of the hummingbird. Hummingbird helps Google better interpret search queries and provide results that match searcher intent. While keywords continue to be important, Hummingbird 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.

Pigeon –

Launch date: July 24, 2014 (US); December 22, 2014

Hazards: Poor on- and off-page SEO

The update is aimed to increase the ranking of local listing in a search. The changes will also affect the search results shown in Google Maps along with the regular Google search results. Pigeon affects those searches in which the user’s location plays an important part.

EMD –

Launch Date: September 2012

Hazards: Low-quality content, exact match search terms in the domain

EMD update launched to prevent poor quality sites from ranking well because they had words that match terms in their domain names. Sites that have improved content may rank better. Google stopped ranking new sites with low-quality content and had exact match words in their domain names.