At the beginning of May 2015, thousands of webmasters noticed significant ranking volatility—some rising, some falling, and some just noticing their competitors juggled around in a new order. As you can imagine, this fueled rampant speculation as to whether this was part of some
new Google Google update, if it was a temporary experiment, or if it was just some hiccup in the search engine’s typical data processing.
Immediately, search marketers turned to the possibility of a Google Panda refresh. Since the last major update from Google was the “Mobilegeddon” update at the end of April, it seemed unlikely that this was the result of some major algorithm update. Plus, since Panda hadn’t seen a refresh in some time, search marketers assumed that it was long overdue. Google, however, immediately dispelled the rumors by announcing that the temporary search volatility was not Panda-related.
It took some time before Google officially confirmed the source of the update, but it finally did. After a few weeks of being unofficially named the “Phantom Update,” thanks to its lack of official acknowledgement, Google recognized that yes, there had been some fundamental changes released to the core algorithm.
The New Quality Assessment
Panda and Penguin, the two most noteworthy updates in Google’s history, were intended to improve results for users with one function in mind: weeding out spam that annoyed and complicated users’ searches. This new unnamed update, which I’ll call the “Quality Update” (in line with other search marketers) takes a different approach. Rather than focusing on penalizing or eliminating spam, it only introduced a handful of new quality assessment indicators that help Google understand how “good” or how authoritative a site is. Essentially, there are new factors that Google uses to determine how worthy a site is to rank.
What New Factors Are in Effect?
Google is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to the specifics of its ranking algorithm—in fact, it’s even holding firm against pressure from multiple European government forces. It certainly isn’t going to explain the inner workings of its system just because you asked nicely. Most of the factors we knew before the update are only known to us because of skilled trial-and-error-style experiments done by dozens of search marketers over the course of months.
Now, we aren’t even sure whether Google has added new ranking factors. It might have only rebalanced the factors that were already there, making some factors more important and some less important, or making minor tweaks to the process the algorithm uses to calculate those factors.
To determine which factors were affected by the update, the best thing to do is take a look at the types of sites that were affected. But this data is somewhat inconsistent; many how-to style sites lost ground as a result of the update, but there are too many exceptions to the rule (how-to sites that gained rank after the update) to confirm any direct correlation. Similarly, many sites from many different industries with many different intentions both gained and lost ground, giving no clear insight into what could have changed in the algorithm or which types of sites that Google targeted.
How to Adjust Your Strategy
If you haven’t already been hit by a sudden ranking change, chances are this update will not affect you. From what we can tell, this update was designed to be a one-and-done style implementation, to take effect immediately without the multiple iterations and data refreshes that are typical of traditional major Google updates. Therefore, no additional preparation is necessary if you haven’t seen any volatility in your own site.
If you have been hit with a ranking drop, there’s only one reason why it could have happened, and unfortunately, it’s pretty general: the new ranking criteria have found your site to be less authoritative than they did before. Essentially, Google feels that you need to step up the quality of your on-site content and structure to see the same rankings you had before. As for specific quality adjustments to make, I can’t make a firm recommendation, as Google has not disclosed any specific information related to their judgement criteria. However, I recommend reading “The 12 Essential Elements of High-Quality Content” to get an understanding of the factors I believe Google uses to determine quality.
I’d also advise you to audit your current onsite and ongoing content strategy according to Google’s outline for what constitutes a high-quality site. These guidelines have remained more or less consistent since 2011, but it pays to reread it—sometimes your strategy can drift from its original intention. Some key things to watch for here include the trustworthiness and authoritativeness of your articles, the semantic sense of your content, the shareability and layout of your pages, and the overall user experience of your website.
What to Expect From Google in the Future
The bigger SEO-related takeaway here is the type of update Google released. It made no formal announcement that the update was coming, revealed very few details about the nature of the update, and even refused to acknowledge that the change was made until pressured to do so by curious search marketers. In addition, Google hasn’t released a major named update since 2013’s Hummingbird Update, despite the unofficially named Pigeon and Mobilegeddon updates.
In the future, this pattern is likely to continue. Google appears happy with the core nature of its algorithm, so any future changes will likely come as unannounced, unnamed, undisclosed tweaks that shake up ranks only slightly, but without warning. Keep watch for them, but don’t lose any sleep over them. As long as you’re following general best practices, you’ll only be rewarded.
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