Whether you have a personal blog, a corporate website, an eCommerce, etc… you should read this short but valuable article in which I will explain what are the main changes in the Google algorithm that make your website have more or less visibility in the SERPs .
2011: Google Panda Algorithm
This algorithm came to light in 2011 and focused on analyzing the content of your website or ecommerce. Namely, Before 2011 it was very easy to position a website. For example, to appear in the top 3 of Google for the search for “best paddle tennis shoes” you would only have to put that phrase many times in the content of the web and the Google algorithm would place it in the first results because the system of classification was only focused on the number of times the word in question was written to order the ranking of the websites.
But not only did it affect this type of page that abused the main one, but as a novelty, the Google Panda algorithm also focused on penalizing:
- Websites with little content that they just repeated the keywords over and over again with different synonyms without worrying about adding value.
- Websites with duplicate content or copied from other pages and little modified.
- Websites with content that did not add value to the user and they only focused on “hacking” the algorithm.
2012: Google Penguin Algorithm
Before the year 2012 that was when Google released your penguin it was relatively easy to position a website, since it was only about place the largest number of incoming links to your website to occupy the first results in the international search engine.
This was done with tools that worked automatically and in a few days you could have a newly created website with a large amount of traffic to be used for the purpose you were looking for.
What Google was pursuing with this algorithm was to reward those websites that did get their links based on the quality content they provided and that they did so naturally and progressively.
2012: Venice Algorithm
Algorithm announced by Google in february 2012 and that would change forever the local searches. This would affect both the user response and the online positioning work plan.
That is, if a user before the Google Venice algorithm When looking for a plumbing company from the city of A Coruña, the result was general, unless it was searched locally, that is, by typing “plumber company in Coruña” in the search engine. But the rules of the game changed with the staging of Venice, since the user would no longer have to put “plumber company in Coruña” but only search for “plumber company” the finder would already throw you the closest plumbers within your city.
This caused a lot of traffic loss to general service websites at a national level, but on the contrary, it brought several improvements:
- The user would no longer have to search for their citybut Google itself, based on your IP, would know your location to give you the best local result.
- From this moment local companies began to gain strengthabove the large directories and national companies.
- For SEOs like me; the big difference was power use Google maps on the web to attack local positions. This “trick” of the map together with an exact address of the business and endorsed by Google My Business helped a lot to improve in the SERPs.
Local SEO update in 2016 with Possum
In 2016 the Google Possum algorithm comes out which also refers to the local world. From the Venice algorithm that I discussed earlier, local searches come into play but with a problem that was fixed with the 2016 entry of Possum; I give you an example.
Before Possum, if you were in the north of the city of Madrid and were looking for a tire replacement company, Google geolocated you based on your IP and determined that you were in Madrid and only gave you results from Madrid city. But with Possum’s entrance, Google continues to interpret that you are in the city of Madrid but does not make it something exclusive for the rest of the neighboring municipalities. So it will show you tire replacement companies that are in Pozuelo, Las Rozas, etc… that are actually closer to you than Madrid south. This was the main advantage of this algorithm.
This algorithm update involved that visibility would be lost on some websites because the algorithm improves and your website is no longer the “best result” or the “nearest result”.
2013: Hummingbird Algorithm
This is one of the Google algorithms that was implemented in 2013 and is based on analyzing the semantics in our searches, it may seem unimportant at first, but it should be noted that the output of this algorithm affected more than 90% of the world’s websites that were cataloged within the Google SERPs.
Thanks to this algorithm, the results in the search engine were more natural and the user’s search intention was answered in a better way.
2014: From http to https
It was in 2014 when Google announced that websites should migrate from http to https. This would not be one of the Google algorithm changes that would cause great “havoc” among the online community, but it did make it clear that it would be one of the factors among many to be taken into account by Google to classify and show according to which websites depending on their encryption.
But what is the https protocol that Google likes so much for and what can it serve us for?
This https protocol is also known as ssl-certificate and its objective is to encode the user’s session on our website. In this way, it is “guaranteed” that the exchange of information that occurs between the user and the web takes place in a secure manner and this cannot be intercepted by third parties.
Given this policy change in Google recommending the https protocol to guarantee our security and our personal data, there were also SERP changesdue to two factors:
- The first of these was due to the fact that appear a new ranking factor the websites that used it improved SEO and this made them gain positions; so if you didn’t install it you could stay behind in the SERPs, not because google penalized you, but because better valued the SEO of your competition.
- The change from http to https caused a lot of headaches for some websites, coming to clone the web and have duplicate content. Since google interpreted that http://miweb.es was a web and that https://miweb.es was another different web but both with the same content…. you can imagine how this would sit to its visibility.
2014: Google Pigeon Algorithm
This Google algorithm is one of the great unknowns for many webmasters and SEO agencies, since only is responsible for regulating local searches as follows:
- thanks to this algorithm a local website of any business can position itself ahead of a giant on the internet for a specific search in a city of a service. For example, if I have a luggage website like this one that has a good presence for many Google searches… if I try to position it for the word “luggage store in Barcelona” based on this algorithm, it will have less chance of appearing in the first results What if I create a luggage website with the url luggage-barcelona.es for example.
- In the same way local links were rewarded over general links. Being more important for a local positioning a link from a newspaper from that same locality than a link from a national newspaper, always saving the distances.
2014: Update to Pirate 2.0
It is a Pirate 1.0 algorithm update that came out in 2012. With this algorithm, Google wants to affect pirate content download websites, whether they are programs, movies, templates, etc…
In this way, it contributes its grain of sand against computer piracy. Benefiting the websites and portals where these programs, movies, etc… can be downloaded legally and complying with the objectives of websites such as DMCA.
Today, in the year 2019 when I write this article, nothing is known about a new update to pirate 3.0, but based on my experience I can tell you that there have been changes since about a year ago it is more difficult for google to accept you on Google Adsense niche websites with the word “download” or intended for that purpose to earn money with Google ads.
2015: Mobilegeddon Algorithm
This that I have put is the “technical” name that this algorithm change received and it may be that by that name it is not familiar to you. But surely you recognize this algorithm if I tell you that it refers to websites that are “mobile-friendly”.
As of April 21, 2015, the search engine would start betting on websites that adapt to different mobile phone models. The main and the most important thing to jump through the hoops of this algorithm was have a responsive themethat is, a theme that would make the website fit both for desktop computers, as well as for tablets and mobile phones.
Today all the themes that come out on the market (speaking of WordPress) are mobile friendly but even in 2015 and 2016 there were many designers who they bet on themes that were not mobile friendly in order to win in design when viewing the web on desktop. A mistake, because today almost 70% of website views are made from mobile phones.
Through you can see how this website, gives the result of “mobile optimized page” from the specific Google tool to test this.
Evolution of Mobilegeddon in 2016 to “Mobile first index”
As of 2016 with the “mobile first index” algorithm pFor Google, the display of the web on mobile becomes the most important, Since that year more searches are made with mobile phones than with computers. In this way google browses our website (mobile version) pretending to be a real user and giving importance relevance to certain factors in the same as they can be:
- suitable size of text in the web.
- that the buttons that they come out are the right size too.
- that the link lists come out well differentiated to be able to click on the link we want.
- that the images do not break the format of the web
- Etc…
Google crawls first and then indexes; What happens with this algorithm is that it will give more importance to the indexing of the mobile version, and if this differs from the desktop version, your positioning in 2016 could have been harmed by stopping indexing certain pages or web content. which is shown in mobile version but not in desktop version.
2015: Rankbrain
This is one of the strangest and most mysterious Google algorithms in my opinion.
It is given an exit date, 2015… but in truth it comes to be an interpretation of the Penguin and Panda algorithms by being able to interpret responses that are given in the SERPs to certain searches. What happens is that it goes a little more…
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