Google Updates and Their Impact on Rankings

How to monitor core algorithm updates, isolate ranking volatility causes, and take corrective SEO measures.

Speakers: Osman Mutlu

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Osman MutluinSEO on Board

12 Apr 2017

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⏱ 11 min read• 1,880 words

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Hey Zeo followers. Today I want to talk about Google güncellemelerinden and how they affect rankings. But before we get into the details and the ranking impact, let's cover the basics. What are these updates? Why do they happen? How often? And who makes them? I'll answer those questions quickly. Let's start right here: what are Google updates? They're really just software improvements built to make search results better. So why do these updates happen? The main reason, like I just said, is to improve search results. It's about returning better answers to users.

Google's real goal is simple. Serve the most accurate, best information for every search on Google. So do these updates follow a schedule? They don't come in fixed cycles. New update needs pop up based on demand. Or based on how long the software takes to build. Or based on how good or bad the search results look. That's why there's no clear frequency. So who builds these updates? We know Google updates come from very talented engineers using mathematical algorithms. There's a detail worth noting here. No single person knows the whole Google update. Nobody knows exactly how all of it works.

Everyone works in a different department, and together they build the core algorithm. So what are these updates? Let me run through the names. I'll skip fast over some of them. I won't go deep, because there are just too many updates. I'll try to explain each one I list in a short sentence. Pirate, the update that affects DMCA. Google built this one to stop spammers from using licensed content or productions. Payday hit both spammers and what we call money queries. Those are the searches that bring in cash.

Some of the best money examples? Words like credit card application or mortgage loans. Google shipped an update called Payday to shut those spammers down. The Pigeon update was built to make local search a lot better. The HTTPS SSL update landed in 2014. Google still tells everyone to use HTTPS and move to an SSL certificate. That advice never stopped. And the 2014 update is what raised the value of using it. Another one is the EMD update. EMD stands for Exact Match Domain. Exact match domains used to rank way better in search results. But the EMD update knocked their value down a bit. The next update was Brand E-Commerce.

The main goal there was better results for brand searches, especially on the e-commerce side. Misspelled brands or search terms used to return totally unrelated sites. But with the Brand E-Commerce update, Google started making sense of those queries. Now it sends you straight to the brand's own site. Hummingbird actually hit the core algorithm at a really deep level. Call it a major update. With Hummingbird, Google leaned more toward long tail keywords. It started getting smarter. Users don't just search short terms made of one or two words.

They also run long tail searches. So Google shipped an update on that side. It started serving better results for long tail keywords. The updates I just listed were rarer ones. Google didn't roll them out very often. Now I want to cover the more fundamental updates. You've definitely heard these names before. Let's jump right in. The Panda update shipped as an update that hit content directly. Panda caused serious problems for sites with weak content quality. What was Google after here? Again, serving users the best content possible. So it dropped the rankings of content it saw as worthless. It pushed up the pages it thought were better.

Penguin is another one of the core updates. Spammers, especially Black Hat SEO folks, always went for link networks. They bought spam links. They started manipulating rankings. Google said: "If that's how you're playing it, I'll dig deeper. I'll ship an update and penalize this work of yours." Then it ran the Penguin algorithm. It penalized every link network and spam link it could detect. Plenty of sites got hit by Penguin too. Even in the latest Penguin update this fall, a lot of sites got penalized again. Honestly, recovering from a Penguin penalty is tough. Cleaning up links is a long process. You have to be really careful.

Sometimes links we think are harmful actually help us. And links we think are helpful may be hurting us. So if you think you got a Penguin penalty, talk to a professional. Another update is happening on the mobile side. That mobile update has been huge for the past two years. I know, you're sick of hearing about mobile. So am I. But it's the truth. Last year, over 50% of searches on Google came from mobile devices. Google started shipping mobile updates to handle that. Better results on mobile. A better experience for users.

So what's at the core of these mobile updates? Google basically wants this from us: "You have a site. Half your users come from mobile. So why don't you have a mobile site? Or if you do, why isn't it working better? Why isn't it more compatible?" The real goal here is making our site mobile friendly. Google already has tons of resources on this. You can even run a mobile-friendly test in Search Console. It shows you which page types on your site aren't mobile friendly. The latest development on the mobile side was this. Google, we're guessing toward the end of this year, will move to mobile-first indexing.

Right now Google search results are ranked based on desktop searches. Or on desktop sites, really. But mobile matters more going forward. So Google will evaluate sites on the mobile side and rank them accordingly. That's why you need to start caring about mobile friendliness today. Honestly, it might already be late. Another update is Phantom. The quality updates. Phantom updates started rolling out really often. There's a Phantom update almost every six months. What sits at the core of a Phantom update? Quality. Meaning your site has to be high quality. And almost everything counts here. Content quality. Ad placements. Does our site actually have good UX? Are there technical problems? All of those questions need answers.

If Phantom hit us in a bad way, finding the reason can be really hard. Reviewing your site completely from scratch will be more useful. Check every single thing you think might be hurting you. One by one. RankBrain, now this one's a messy topic. We tried to show that here by drawing a brain. RankBrain isn't actually a Google update. It's a change in how the Google algorithm works. So what makes RankBrain special? It uses machine learning. That means it can teach itself.

The algorithm is smart. It has machine learning built in. So it improves search results on its own. What does it look at while doing that? First, it looks at user intent. That means user behavior. And user intent is the biggest thing driving CTR. So you have to measure how long users stay on your site. You also need to track how often they click from search results. Check your CTR numbers in Google Search Console. Find titles that rank well but get few clicks. Improve those titles and meta descriptions.

Ask how RankBrain works and even Google can't give a clear answer. They basically say "we don't fully understand it either." Those were the core updates I wanted to cover. Google also has a system called core. Core is the name for the engine behind all these algorithms. So what is core exactly? Core is the algorithm itself. The old Panda and Penguin updates won't ship separately anymore. Google folded both of them into core. So when Google runs a core update, both Panda and Penguin get updated. What's the downside for us? Here's the catch. Before, Panda and Penguin ran separately. That made it easy to tell which one hit us.

A Panda update dropped? Okay, my content has a problem. Same with Penguin. Penguin update? Yep, my links are the issue. Let me fix that right away. That's how we took action. But now both are folded into the core. That makes life harder for webmasters. We covered the basics of Google güncellemelerinden. So I don't want these updates to hurt me. What should I do? Let's wrap this up with a quick summary. Always audit your content. Are we really answering the queries users type in? That matters a lot. Second point: links. Spam sites or spam anchor text pointing at you? Same sources hitting you over and over? That's a real risk.

Always reject spam links with a disavow file. Better yet, contact those site owners directly. Ask them to remove the links. Next up, mobile friendliness. I said it's critical. I'll say it again. Please make your sites fully mobile-friendly by now. Better yet, build for every device type, not just one. That earns you extra points. Next up: technical improvements. You need to keep adopting new technologies as they land. Because we have to serve our content and page elements faster and better. So technical work should never stop. And if we have deeper technical problems, we need to fix them and move forward.

So at its core. Google is telling us one thing: "Build user-friendly sites." If you visit your own site and you're happy. It's probably a good site. But you have to stay objective. Next question: what if you think these updates hurt you? What do you do? The most important thing here is analyzing why we got hit. Like I said, it comes down to analysis. Did I get a content penalty? A link penalty? Is it a mobile issue? Or a general quality problem?

You need to analyze this carefully. Any problem, especially if Phantom hit us, can point to a broad issue. Even ad placement matters here. If you show visitors more ads than content, that can cause problems. So we got hit. We analyzed it. We basically tried to figure out what caused it. So how do we measure things here? You need to look at the subpages of sites losing traffic. What do I mean? Which pages did I lose traffic from? If I lost traffic from certain page types or a certain source path. I need to dig into that page much harder. That way I can pinpoint the problem. So we found the issues. We ran the analysis. We did the measurement. What's left?

Taking action is what's left. If my content has problems, I might even go back and refresh all of it. If there's a link problem, I need to step in right away. If I have technical problems, I need to fix them right away. If there's stuff users don't want, I need to pull it out of the system. That way our site lands in a better spot on the next algorithm. It might even climb higher. I tried to cover Google güncellemelerinden and their impact on rankings.

There are so many updates that I couldn't give each one its own time. I couldn't go super deep. But in upcoming videos, we can walk through them one by one. Thanks for giving us your time and watching. See you next time.

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