2019

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER – AUGUST 1

Google Updates

Site Diversity Update — June 6, 2019

Google’s Search Liaison announced a “change” that will reduce multiple site listings in the search results. That means no more than two pages from the same site. This change is called the Site Diversity Change. Read More.

June 2019 Core Update — June 3, 2019

The focus on E-A-T to solve Google update problems is a mistake because it ignores the fact that Google’s algorithm is larger than just expertise, authoritativeness and trust. Those are just three factors out of over 200 factors. Read More. Indexing Bugs — May 23, 2019

Just to keep you all up to date on the issue with pages dropping out of the Google index starting last Thursday. It is currently still not fully resolved and we are in day five now. But Google seems to be just about done resolving it fully. Read More. Deindexing Bug — April 5, 2019

On Friday, April 5, after many website owners and SEOs reported pages falling out of rankings, Google confirmed a bug that was causing pages to be deindexed. MozCast showed a multi-day increase in temperatures, including a 105° spike on April 6. While deindexing would naturally cause ranking flux, as pages temporarily fell out of rankings and then reappeared. Read More. March 2019 Core Update — March 12, 2019

Here's an early look at a nutrition, small e-commerce and larger informational site after the March update. Each made changes based on clues from Google’s Quality Raters’ Guidelines; all saw gains in traffic after the update. On March 12, Google released an update to its algorithms that had a significant impact on quite a few sites across the web. Read More. 19-result SERPs — March 1, 2019

Counting "organic" results in 2019 is challenging — some elements, like expanded site-links (in the #1 position), Top Stories, and image results can occupy an organic position. In-depth Articles are particularly challenging (more on that in a moment), and the resulting math usually leaves us with page-one SERPs with counts from 4 to 12. Friday's numbers were completely beyond anything we've seen historically, though, with organic counts up to 19 results. Read More. 2

March 1st Algorithm Ranking Update – Unconfirmed (SER)

On Friday afternoon, March 1st, maybe going through Saturday, March 2nd, there may have been yet another Google search ranking algorithm update. They seem like tremors, maybe tweaks to previous updates. We have both chatter and trackers showing the updates. Read More. Unnamed Update — November 29, 2018

There seems to have been a Google search ranking algorithm update on November 30th, this past Friday. There is chatter on social media and in the ongoing WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World forums. Read More. Unnamed Update — October 15, 2018

On Google search algorithm updates - we've had so many but there are numerous signs of another update. Most, not all, but most of the automated tracking tools are showing signs of the update. Read More. Medic Core Update — August 1, 2018 The Google search algorithm update from August 1 is now fully rolled out, and here is what we know about the update, who we think was impacted and some of the analysis of what, if any, actions you may want to consider taking if you were negatively impacted. Read More. Chrome Security Warnings (Full Site) — July 24, 2018 Google has given site owners plenty of notice that this update was coming, dating back to February 2018. In order to avoid the “Not secure” warning being displayed in Chrome, sites will have to migrate to HTTPS. Sites that have already migrated to HTTPS have nothing to worry about. Read More. Unnamed Update — July 21, 2018 Starting maybe late Friday and into Saturday there were signals of a possible Google search algorithm update. The chatter is a bit limited, more than the normal chatter, but the tracking tools mostly saw signs of an update. Read More. Mobile Speed Update — July 9, 2018 After six months of preparation, the Google Speed Update is now rolling out. It only impacts the mobile search rankings of the slowest of sites on the internet. Read More. Video Carousels — June 14, 2018 Google has been replacing the video box in the desktop search results with a new carousel-formatted video box. The video carousel box gives searchers a way to click and toggle through more than just three videos by clicking on the right arrow on the last video on the right of the box. Read More. Unnamed Update — May 23, 2018 Mid-may we reported of a Google update brewing that led to more fluctuations around May 17th or so. Now I am seeing some chatter and signs from the tracking tools of an update happening today, May 24th. Read More. 3

Snippet Length Drop — May 13, 2018 Google has confirmed that only about five months after increasing the search results snippets, it has now decreased the length of these snippets. There is no fixed length for snippets. Length varies based on what our systems deem to be most useful. Read More. Mobile-First Index Roll-out — March 26, 2018 Google has announced that it has begun the process of rolling out the mobile-first indexing to more sites. This rollout is only for sites that “follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing,” Google said. Read More.

Zero-result SERP Test — March 14, 2018 These SERPs display a Knowledge Card with a "Show all results" button and no additional organic results or SERP features. Read More.

Brackets Core Update — March 8, 2018 Google Confirmed Weekend Algorithm Ranking Shift As "Core Update" Yesterday we reported that we thought there was a Google algorithm ranking update over the weekend and to my surprise, Google actually confirmed it. Read More.

Unnamed Update — February 20, 2018 I am starting to see a bit of chatter around the SEO industry about a possible Google algorithm and ranking update. Rankings showed a spike in volatility (across a number of tools) around February 20th, which quickly settled down, sometimes signalling a targeted algorithm update. Google did not confirm any update in this time period. Read More.

Maccabees Update — December 14, 2017 Google confirms mid-December search ranking algorithm updates. Anecdotal evidence shows that many affiliate type sites have felt it the most. Normal e-commerce sites have not been affected on the same scale but some have reported as suffering drops in traffic, but e-commerce sites appear to be in the minority. Read More. Snippet Length Increase — November 30, 2017 Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that it has made a change to the way it displays snippets in search results. A snippet is the description of a page shown below the URL in an organic search result that helps show how it relates to the search query. Read More.

Unnamed Update — November 14, 2017 Algorithm trackers and webmaster chatter detected a high amount of flux, peaking (in our data) around November 15. Google did not confirm an official update. Mid-November Google Algorithm Search Ranking Update. Read More.

Featured Snippet Drop — October 27, 2017 Over a period of a few days from October 27-31, there was a substantial drop in Featured Snippets. This co-occurred with a jump in Knowledge Panels, as Google seemed to add many panels for broad terms and objects ("travel", "toilet", "web design", etc.). Some of these panels disappeared around December 15. Read More. 4

Chrome Security Warnings (Forms) — October 17, 2017 With the launch of Chrome 62, Google started warning visitors to sites with unsecured forms. While not an algorithm update, this was an important step in Google's push toward HTTPS and may have a material impact on site traffic. Google emails warnings to webmasters that Chrome will mark http pages with forms as ‘not secure’ Read More.

Unnamed Update — September 27, 2017 Algorithm trackers (including MozCast) and webmaster chatter spotted increasing flux starting around September 25th, which seemed to spike on the 27th, after a period of relative calm. No update was officially confirmed. Read More.

Google Jobs — June 20, 2017 Google officially launched their jobs portal, including a stand-alone 3-pack of job listings in search results. These results drew data from almost all of the major providers, including LinkedIn, Monster, Glassdoor, and CareerBuilder. Read More.

Unnamed Update — May 17, 2017 MozCast and other tools tracked a massive, multi-day spike that kicked off around May 17th. This preceded a sustained period of high algorithmic flux that may not have settled down for months. Read More.

Google Tops 50% HTTPS — April 16, 2017 According to our MozCast 10K tracking set, half of page-1 Google organic results were secure/HTTPs as of mid-April. This increased to close to 75% by the end of 2017. While there haven't been any big jumps recently – suggesting this change is due to steady adoption of HTTPS and not a major algorithm update. Read More.

Fred (Unconfirmed) — March 8, 2017 Google won't comment about the "Fred update," but based on our own analysis, many affected sites saw up to a 90% drop in traffic. A content site, often in a blog format, but not always, that has content on various topics — which looks to be written for ranking purposes and then has ads and/or affiliate links sprinkled throughout the article. Many of these sites are not industry expert sites, but rather they seem to have content on vast array of topics that are not adding all that much value above what other sites in the industry have already written. Read More.

Unnamed Update — February 6, 2017 Algorithm changes beginning on February 1st continued for a full week, peaking around February 6th (some reported the 7th). Webmaster chatter and industry case studies suggest these were separate events. Read More.

Unnamed Update — February 1, 2017 There was a period of heavy algorithm flux starting around February 1st and peaking around February 6th. It is unclear whether this was multiple algorithm updates or a single update with an extended roll-out, but anecdotal evidence suggests at least two updates. Read More. 5

Intrusive Interstitial Penalty — January 10, 2017 Google started rolling out a penalty to punish aggressive interstitials and pop-ups that might damage the mobile user experience. Google also provided a rare warning of this update five months in advance. MozCast showed high temperatures from January 10-11, but many SEOs reported minimal impact on sites that should have been affected. Read More.

Unnamed Update — December 14, 2016 Multiple Google trackers showed massive flux around December 14-15, including a rare MozCast temperature of 109°F. Webmaster chatter was heavy as well, but Google did not confirm an update. Read More.

Unnamed Update — November 10, 2016 MozCast detected a major (106°) spike on November 10th and another on the 18th. Industry chatter was high during both periods, with some suggesting that the second spike was a reversal of the first update. Google has not confirmed either event. Read More.

Penguin 4.0, Phase 2 — October 6, 2016 The second phase of Penguin 4.0 was the reversal of all previous Penguin penalties. This seemed to happen after the new code rolled out, and may have taken as long as two weeks. Post-Penguin activity had one final peak on October 6th (116°), but it is unclear whether this was Penguin or a new update. Algorithm temperatures finally started to drop after October 6th. Read More.

Penguin 4.0, Phase 1 — September 27, 2016 The first phase of Penguin 4.0, which probably launched around September 22-23, was the rollout of the new, "gentler" Penguin algorithm, which devalues bad links instead of penalizing sites. Penguin 4.0 has changed all of this. Now, Penguin refreshes in real-time, which means that site penalties are incurred or lifted whenever Google crawls and reindexes a page. In other words, building spammy links could burn your SERPs tomorrow, but you no longer have to wait for ages for a penalty to be lifted.Read More.

Penguin 4.0 Announcement — September 23, 2016 After almost two years of waiting, Google finally announced a major Penguin update. They suggested the new Penguin is now real-time and baked into the "core" algorithm. Initial impact assessments were small, but it was later revealed that the Penguin 4.0 rollout was unusually long and multi-phase (see September 27th and October 6th). Read More.

Image/Universal Drop — September 13, 2016 MozCast recorded a nearly-record 111° temperature and a 50% drop in SERPs with image (universal/vertical) results. The universal result shake-up opened up an organic position on page 1, causing substantial ranking shifts, but it's likely that this was part of a much larger update. Read More. 6

Possum — September 1, 2016 Everything you need to know about Google’s ‘Possum’ algorithm update. Wondering what's up with local search rankings lately? Columnist Joy Hawkins has the scoop on a recent local algorithm update that local SEO experts are calling 'Possum. One of the main things that updated was Google’s filter that applies to the local results. Read More.

Mobile-friendly 2 — May 12, 2016 Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm boost has rolled out. The new Google mobile-friendly algorithm is supposed to give an additional ranking boost for mobile-friendly websites in the mobile search results. Read More.

Unnamed Update — May 10, 2016 MozCast and other Google weather trackers showed a historically rare week-long pattern of algorithm activity, including a 97-degree spike. Google would not confirm this update, and no explanation is currently available. Read More.

AdWords Shake-up — February 23, 2016 Google made major changes to AdWords, removing right-column ads entirely and rolling out 4-ad top blocks on many commercial searches. While this was a paid search update, it had significant implications for CTR for both paid and organic results, especially on competitive keywords. Read More.

Unnamed Update — January 8, 2016 Multiple tracking tools (including MozCast) reported historically-large rankings movement, which Google later confirmed as a "core algo update". Google officially said that this was not a Penguin update, but details remain sketchy. Read More.

RankBrain — October 26, 2015 Google uses a machine-learning artificial intelligence system called “RankBrain” to help sort through its search results. Wondering how that works and fits in with Google’s overall ranking system? Here’s what we know about RankBrain. Read More.

Panda 4.2 (#28) — July 17, 2015 The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, you unfortunately won’t notice the full impact immediately but you should see changes in your organic rankings gradually over time. Read More.

The Quality Update — May 3, 2015 The Quality Update: Google Confirms Changing How Quality Is Assessed, Resulting In Rankings Shake-Up. Google’s results have changed since the beginning of this month, and Google’s officially confirmed to Search Engine Land that this is due to a change with how it assesses content quality. Call it “The Quality Update,” if you will. Read More. 7

Mobile Update AKA “Mobilegeddon” — April 22, 2015 In a rare move, Google pre-announced an algorithm update, telling us that mobile rankings would differ for mobile-friendly sites starting on April 21st. The impact of this update was, in the short- term, much smaller than expected, and our data showed that algorithm flux peaked on April 22nd. Read More.

Unnamed Update — February 4, 2015 Multiple SERP-trackers and many webmasters reported major flux in Google SERPs. Speculation ranged from an e-commerce focused update to a mobile usability update. Google did not officially confirm an update. Read More.

Pigeon Expands (UK, CA, AU) — December 22, 2014 Google's major local algorithm update, dubbed "Pigeon", expanded to the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. The original update hit the United States in July 2014. The update was confirmed on the 22nd but may have rolled out as early as the 19th. Read More.

Penguin Everflux — December 10, 2014 A Google representative said that Penguin had shifted to continuous updates, moving away from infrequent, major updates. While the exact timeline was unclear, this claim seemed to fit ongoing flux after Penguin 3.0 (including unconfirmed claims of a Penguin 3.1). Read More.

Pirate 2.0 — October 21, 2014 More than two years after the original DMCA/"Pirate" update, Google launched another update to combat software and digital media piracy. This update was highly targeted, causing dramatic drops in ranking to a relatively small group of sites. Read More.

Penguin 3.0 — October 17, 2014 More than a year after the previous Penguin update (2.1), Google launched a Penguin refresh. This update appeared to be smaller than expected (<1% of US/English queries affected) and was probably data-only (not a new Penguin algorithm). The timing of the update was unclear, especially internationally, and Google claimed it was spread out over "weeks". Read More.

In The News Box — October 1, 2014 Google made what looked like a display change to News-box results, but later announced that they had expanded news links to a much larger set of potential sites. The presence of news results in SERPs also spiked, and major news sites reported substantial traffic changes. Read More.

Panda 4.1 (#27) — September 23, 2014 Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released. Google said in a post on Google+ that a “slow rollout” began earlier this week and will continue into next week, before being complete. Google said that depending on location, about 3%-to-5% of search queries will be affected. Read More.

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Authorship Removed — August 28, 2014 Following up on the June 28th drop of authorship photos, Google announced that they would be completely removing authorship markup (and would no longer process it). By the next morning, authorship bylines had disappeared from all SERPs. Read More.

HTTPS/SSL Update — August 6, 2014 Google has announced that going HTTPS — adding a SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site — will give you a minor ranking boost. Google says this gives websites a small ranking benefit, only counting as a “very lightweight signal” within the overall ranking algorithm. Read More.

Pigeon — July 24, 2014 Google has released a new algorithm to provide a more useful, relevant and accurate local search results that are tied more closely to traditional web search ranking signals. The changes will be visible within the search results and Google Web search results. Read More.

Authorship Photo Drop — June 28, 2014 John Mueller made a surprise announcement (on June 25th) that Google would be dropping all authorship photos from SERPs (after heavily promoting authorship as a connection to Google+). The drop was complete around June 28th. Read More.

Payday Loan 3.0 — June 12, 2014 Less than a month after the Payday Loan 2.0 anti-spam update, Google launched another major iteration. Official statements suggested that 2.0 targeted specific sites, while 3.0 targeted spammy queries. Read More.

Panda 4.0 (#26) — May 19, 2014 Google’s Panda algorithm is designed to prevent sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results. Panda 4.0 must be a major update to the actual algorithm versus just a data refresh. Read More.

Payday Loan 2.0 — May 16, 2014 Google has confirmed they have released a new algorithm update to their Payday Loan Algorithm update over this weekend. This algorithm specifically targets “very spammy queries” and is unrelated to the Panda or Penguin algorithms. Read More.

Unnamed Update — March 24, 2014 Major algorithm flux trackers and webmaster chatter spiked around 3/24-3/25, and some speculated that the new, "softer" Panda update had arrived. Many sites reported ranking changes, but this update was never confirmed by Google. Read More. 9

Page Layout #3 — February 6, 2014 Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced that Google has released a refresh of its Page Layout Algorithm. The filter, also known as the Top Heavy algorithm, downgrades the ranking of a web page with too many ads at the top or if the ads are deemed too distracting for users. Read More.

Authorship Shake-up — December 19, 2013 As predicted by Matt Cutts at Pubcon Las Vegas, authorship mark-up disappeared from roughly 15% of queries over a period of about a month. The fall bottomed out around December 19th, but the numbers remain volatile and have not recovered to earlier highs. Read More.

Unnamed Update — December 17, 2013 Almost all global flux trackers registered historically high activity. Google would not confirm an update, suggesting that they avoid updates near the holidays. MozCast also registered a rise in some Partial-Match Domains (PMDs), but the patterns were unclear. Read More.

Unnamed Update — November 14, 2013 Multiple Google trackers picked up unusual activity, which co-occurred with a report of widespread DNS errors in Google Webmaster Tools. Google did not confirm an update, and the cause and nature of this flux was unclear. Read More.

Penguin 2.1 (#5) — October 4, 2013 After a 4-1/2 month gap, Google launched another Penguin update. Given the 2.1 designation, this was probably a data update (primarily) and not a major change to the Penguin algorithm. The overall impact seemed to be moderate, although some webmasters reported being hit hard. Read More.

Hummingbird — August 20, 2013 Google has a new search algorithm, the system it uses to sort through all the information it has when you search and come back with answers. It’s called “Hummingbird” and below, what we know about it so far. Read More.

In-depth Articles — August 6, 2013 Google added a new type of news result called "in-depth articles", dedicated to more evergreen, long-form content. At launch, it included links to three articles, and appeared across about 3% of the searches that MozCast tracks. Read More.

Unnamed Update — July 26, 2013 MozCast tracked a large Friday spike (105° F), with other sources showing significant activity over the weekend. Google has not confirmed this update. Read More.

Knowledge Graph Expansion — July 19, 2013 Seemingly overnight, queries with Knowledge Graph (KG) entries expanded by more than half (+50.4%) across the MozCast data set, with more than a quarter of all searches showing some kind of KG entry. Read More. 10

Panda Recovery — July 18, 2013 Google confirmed a Panda update, but it was unclear whether this was one of the 10-day rolling updates or something new. The implication was that this was algorithmic and may have "softened" some previous Panda penalties. Read More.

Multi-Week Update — June 27, 2013 Google's Matt Cutts tweeted a reply suggesting a "multi-week" algorithm update between roughly June 12th and "the week after July 4th". The nature of the update was unclear, but there was massive rankings volatility during that time period, peaking on June 27th (according to MozCast data). It appears that Google may have been testing some changes that were later rolled back. Read More.

Panda Dance — June 11, 2013 While not an actual Panda update, Matt Cutts made an important clarification at SMX Advanced, suggesting that Panda was still updating monthly, but each update rolled out over about 10 days. This was not the "everflux" many people had expected after Panda #25. Read More.

Penguin 2.0 (#4) — May 22, 2013 After months of speculation bordering on hype, the 4th Penguin update (dubbed "2.0" by Google) arrived with only moderate impact. The exact nature of the changes were unclear, but some evidence suggested that Penguin 2.0 was more finely targeted to the page level. Read More.

Domain Crowding — May 21, 2013 Google released an update to control domain crowding/diversity deep in the SERPs (pages 2+). The timing was unclear, but it seemed to roll out just prior to Penguin 2.0 in the US and possibly the same day internationally. Read More.

Phantom — May 9, 2013 In the period around May 9th, there were many reports of an algorithm update (also verified by high MozCast activity). The exact nature of this update was unknown, but many sites reported significant traffic loss. Read More.

Panda #25 — March 14, 2013 Matt Cutts pre-announced a Panda update at SMX West, and suggested it would be the last update before Panda was integrated into the core algorithm. The exact date was unconfirmed, but MozCast data suggests 3/13-3/14. Read More.

Panda #24 — January 22, 2013 Google announced its first official update of 2013, claiming 1.2% of queries affected. This did not seem related to talk of an update around 1/17-18 (which Google did not confirm). Read More. 11

Panda #23 — December 21, 2012 Right before the Christmas holiday, Google rolled out another Panda update. They officially called it a "refresh", impacting 1.3% of English queries. This was a slightly higher impact than Pandas #21 and #22. Read More.

Knowledge Graph Expansion — December 4, 2012 Google added Knowledge Graph functionality to non-English queries, including Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian. Read More.

Panda #22 — November 21, 2012 After some mixed signals, Google confirmed the 22nd Panda update, which appears to have been data-only. This came on the heels of a larger, but unnamed update around November 19th. Read More.

Panda #21 — November 5, 2012 Google’s confirmed to us that a Panda Update happened yesterday. Google said that worldwide, the update will impact about 0.4% of queries that a regular user might notice. For those searching in the United States in English, the percentage is higher. 1.1%, Google says. Read More.

Page Layout #2 — October 9, 2012 Google announced an update to its original page layout algorithm change back in January, which targeted pages with too many ads above the fold. It's unclear whether this was an algorithm change or a Panda-style data refresh. Read More.

Penguin #3 — October 5, 2012 After suggesting the next Penguin update would be major, Google released a minor Penguin data update, impacting "0.3% of queries". Penguin update numbering was rebooted, similar to Panda - this was the 3rd Penguin release. Read More.

August/September 65-Pack — October 4, 2012 Google published their monthly (bi-monthly?) list of search highlights. The 65 updates for August and September included 7-result SERPs, Knowledge Graph expansion, updates to how "page quality" is calculated, and changes to how local results are determined. Read More.

Panda #20 — September 27, 2012 Overlapping the EMD update, a fairly major Panda update (algo + data) rolled out, officially affecting 2.4% of queries. As the 3.X series was getting odd, industry sources opted to start naming Panda updates in order (this was the 20th). Read More.

Exact-Match Domain (EMD) Update — September 27, 2012 Google announced a change in the way it was handling exact-match domains (EMDs). This led to large-scale devaluation, reducing the presence of EMDs in the MozCast data set by over 10%. Official word is that this change impacted 0.6% of queries (by volume). Read More. 12

Panda 3.9.2 (#19) — September 18, 2012 Google rolled out another Panda refresh, which appears to have been data-only. Ranking flux was moderate but not on par with a large-scale algorithm update. Read More.

Panda 3.9.1 (#18) — August 20, 2012 Google rolled out yet another Panda data update, but the impact seemed to be fairly small. Since the Panda 3.0 series ran out of numbers at 3.9, the new update was dubbed 3.9.1. Read More.

7-Result SERPs — August 14, 2012 Google made a significant change to the Top 10, limiting it to 7 results for many queries. Our research showed that this change rolled out over a couple of days, finally impacting about 18% of the keywords we tracked. Read More.

June/July 86-Pack — August 10, 2012 After a summer hiatus, the June and July Search Quality Highlights were rolled out in one mega-post. Major updates included Panda data and algorithm refreshes, an improved rank-ordering function (?), a ranking boost for "trusted sources", and changes to site clustering. Read More.

DMCA Penalty (“Pirate”) — August 10, 2012 Google announced that they would start penalizing sites with repeat copyright violations, probably via DMCA takedown requests. Timing was stated as "starting next week" (8/13?). Read More.

Panda 3.9 (#17) — July 24, 2012 A month after Panda 3.8, Google rolled out a new Panda update. Rankings fluctuated for 5-6 days, although no single day was high enough to stand out. Google claimed ~1% of queries were impacted. Read More.

Link Warnings — July 19, 2012 In a repeat of March/April, Google sent out a large number of unnatural link warnings via Google Webmaster Tools. In a complete turn-around, they then announced that these new warnings may not actually represent a serious problem. Read More.

Panda 3.8 (#16) — June 25, 2012 Google rolled out another Panda data refresh, but this appeared to be data only (no algorithm changes) and had a much smaller impact than Panda 3.7. Read More.

Panda 3.7 (#15) — June 8, 2012 Google rolled out yet another Panda data update, claiming that less than 1% of queries were affect. Ranking fluctuation data suggested that the impact was substantially higher than previous Panda updates (3.5, 3.6). Read More. 13

May 39-Pack — June 7, 2012 Google released their monthly Search Highlights, with 39 updates in May. Major changes included Penguin improvements, better link-scheme detection, changes to title/snippet rewriting, and updates to . Read More.

Penguin 1.1 (#2) — May 25, 2012 Google rolled out its first targeted data update after the "Penguin" algorithm update. This confirmed that Penguin data was being processed outside of the main search index, much like Panda data. Read More.

Knowledge Graph — May 16, 2012 In a major step toward semantic search, Google started rolling out "Knowledge Graph", a SERP- integrated display providing supplemental object about certain people, places, and things. Expect to see "knowledge panels" appear on more and more SERPs over time. Read More.

April 52-Pack — May 4, 2012 Google published details of 52 updates in April, including changes that were tied to the "Penguin" update. Other highlights included a 15% larger "base" index, improved pagination handling, and a number of updates to sitelinks. Read More.

Panda 3.6 (#14) — April 27, 2012 Barely a week after Panda 3.5, Google rolled out yet another Panda data update. The implications of this update were unclear, and it seemed that the impact was relatively small. Read More.

Penguin — April 24, 2012 After weeks of speculation about an "Over-optimization penalty", Google finally rolled out the "Webspam Update", which was soon after dubbed "Penguin." Penguin adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing, and impacted an estimated 3.1% of English queries. Read More.

Panda 3.5 (#13) — April 19, 2012 In the middle of a busy week for the algorthim, Google quietly rolled out a Panda data update. A mix of changes made the impact difficult to measure, but this appears to have been a fairly routine update with minimal impact. Read More.

Parked Domain Bug — April 16, 2012 After a number of webmasters reported ranking shuffles, Google confirmed that a data error had caused some domains to be mistakenly treated as parked domains (and thereby devalued). This was not an intentional algorithm change. Read More.

March 50-Pack — April 3, 2012 Google posted another batch of update highlights, covering 50 changes in March. These included confirmation of Panda 3.4, changes to anchor-text "scoring", updates to image search, and changes to how queries with local intent are interpreted. Read More. 14

Panda 3.4 (#12) — March 23, 2012 Google announced another Panda update, this time via Twitter as the update was rolling out. Their public statements estimated that Panda 3.4 impacted about 1.6% of search results. Read More.

Search Quality Video — March 12, 2012 This wasn't an algorithm update, but Google published a rare peek into a search quality meeting. For anyone interested in the algorithm, the video provides a lot of context to both Google's process and their priorities. It's also a chance to see in action. Read More.

Venice — February 27, 2012 As part of their monthly update, Google mentioned code-name "Venice". This local update appeared to more aggressively localize organic results and more tightly integrate local search data. The exact roll-out date was unclear. Read More.

February 40-Pack (2) — February 27, 2012 Google published a second set of "search quality highlights" at the end of the month, claiming more than 40 changes in February. Notable changes included multiple image-search updates, multiple freshness updates (including phasing out 2 old bits of the algorithm), and a Panda update. Read More.

Panda 3.3 (#11) — February 27, 2012 Google rolled out another post-"flux" Panda update, which appeared to be relatively minor. This came just 3 days after the 1-year anniversary of Panda, an unprecedented lifespan for a named update. Read More.

February 17-Pack — February 3, 2012 Google released another round of "search quality highlights" (17 in all). Many related to speed, freshness, and spell-checking, but one major announcement was tighter integration of Panda into the main search index. Read More.

Ads Above The Fold — January 19, 2012 Google updated their page layout algorithms to devalue sites with too much ad-space above the "fold". It was previously suspected that a similar factor was in play in Panda. The update had no official name, although it was referenced as "Top Heavy" by some SEOs. Read More.

Panda 3.2 (#10) — January 18, 2012 Google confirmed a Panda data update, although suggested that the algorithm hadn't changed. It was unclear how this fit into the "Panda Flux" scheme of more frequent data updates. Read More.

Search + Your World — January 10, 2012 Google announced a radical shift in personalization - aggressively pushing Google+ social data and user profiles into SERPs. Google also added a new, prominent toggle button to shut off personalization. Read More. 15

January 30-Pack — January 5, 2012 Google announced 30 changes over the previous month, including image search landing-page quality detection, more relevant site-links, more rich snippets, and related-query improvements. The line between an "algo update" and a "feature" got a bit more blurred. Read More.

December 10-Pack — December 1, 2011 Google outlined a second set of 10 updates, announcing that these posts would come every month. Updates included related query refinements, parked domain detection, blog search freshness, and image search freshness. The exact dates of each update were not provided. Read More.

Panda 3.1 (#9) — November 18, 2011 After Panda 2.5, Google entered a period of "Panda Flux" where updates started to happen more frequently and were relatively minor. Some industry analysts called the 11/18 update 3.1, even though there was no official 3.0. For the purposes of this history, we will discontinue numbering Panda updates except for very high-impact changes. Read More.

10-Pack of Updates — November 14, 2011 This one was a bit unusual. In a bid to be more transparent, Matt Cutts released a post with 10 recent algorithm updates. It's not clear what the timeline was, and most were small updates, but it did signal a shift in how Google communicates algorithm changes. Read More.

Freshness Update — November 3, 2011 Google announced that an algorithm change rewarding freshness would impact up to 35% of queries (almost 3X the publicly stated impact of Panda 1.0). This update primarly affected time-sensitive results, but signalled a much stronger focus on recent content. Read More.

Query Encryption — October 18, 2011 Google announced they would be encrypting search queries, for privacy reasons. Unfortunately, this disrupted organic keyword referral data, returning "(not provided)" for some organic traffic. This number increased in the weeks following the launch. Read More.

Panda “Flux” (#8) — October 5, 2011 Panda 2.5 then is a series of Panda algorithm and site recalculation updates over a period of several weeks. September 27th, October 3rd, and October 13th have been confirmed by Google, but it appears that there may have been several other updates. Read More.

“Minor” Update On November 18th (SEL)

Panda 2.5 (#7) — September 28, 2011 After more than month, Google rolled out another Panda update. Specific details of what changed were unclear, but some sites reported large-scale losses. Read More. 16

516 Algo Updates — September 21, 2011 This wasn't an update, but it was an amazing revelation. Google CEO told Congress that Google made 516 updates in 2010. The real shocker? They tested over 13,000 updates. Read More.

Pagination Elements — September 15, 2011 To help fix crawl and duplication problems created by pagination, Google introduced the rel="next" and rel="prev" link attributes. Google also announced that they had improved automatic consolidation and canonicalization for "View All" pages. Read More.

Expanded Sitelinks — August 16, 2011 After experimenting for a while, Google officially rolled out expanded site-links, most often for brand queries. At first, these were 12-packs, but Google appeared to limit the expanded site-links to 6 shortly after the roll-out. Read More.

Panda 2.4 (#6) — August 12, 2011 Google rolled Panda out internationally, both for English-language queries globally and non-English queries except for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Google reported that this impacted 6-9% of queries in affected countries. Read More.

Panda 2.3 (#5) — July 23, 2011 Webmaster chatter suggested that Google rolled out yet another update. It was unclear whether new factors were introduced, or this was simply an update to the Panda data and ranking factors. Read More.

Google+ — June 28, 2011 After a number of social media failures, Google launched a serious attack on Facebook with Google+. Google+ revolved around circles for sharing content, and was tightly integrated into products like . Early adopters were quick to jump on board, and within 2 weeks Google+ reached 10M users. Read More.

Panda 2.2 (#4) — June 21, 2011 Google continued to update Panda-impacted sites and data, and version 2.2 was officially acknowledged. Panda updates occurred separately from the main index and not in real-time, reminiscent of early Google Dance updates. Read More.

Schema.org — June 2, 2011 Google, Yahoo and Microsoft jointly announced support for a consolidated approach to structured data. They also created a number of new "schemas", in an apparent bid to move toward even richer search results. Read More.

Panda 2.1 (#3) — May 9, 2011 Initially dubbed “Panda 3.0”, Google appeared to roll out yet another round of changes. These changes weren’t discussed in detail by Google and seemed to be relatively minor. Read More. 17

Panda 2.0 (#2) — April 11, 2011 Google rolled out the Panda update to all English queries worldwide (not limited to English-speaking countries). New signals were also integrated, including data about sites users blocked via the SERPs directly or the Chrome browser. Read More.

The +1 Button — March 30, 2011 Responding to competition by major social sites, including Facebook and Twitter, Google launched the +1 button (directly next to results links). Clicking [+1] allowed users to influence search results within their social circle, across both organic and paid results. Read More.

Panda/Farmer — February 23, 2011 A major algorithm update hit sites hard, affecting up to 12% of search results (a number that came directly from Google). Panda seemed to crack down on thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-to-content ratios, and a number of other quality issues. Panda rolled out over at least a couple of months, hitting Europe in April 2011. Read More.

Attribution Update — January 28, 2011 In response to high-profile spam cases, Google rolled out an update to help better sort out content attribution and stop scrapers. According to Matt Cutts, this affected about 2% of queries. It was a clear precursor to the Panda updates. Read More.

Overstock.com Penalty — January 1, 2011 In a rare turn of events, a public outing of shady SEO practices by Overstock.com resulted in a very public Google penalty. JCPenney was hit with a penalty in February for similar bad behavior. Both situations represented a shift in Google's attitude and foreshadowed the Panda update. Read More.

Negative Reviews — December 1, 2010 After an expose in the New York Times about how e-commerce site DecorMyEyes was ranking based on negative reviews, Google made a rare move and reactively adjusted the algorithm to target sites using similar tactics. Read More.

Social Signals — December 1, 2010 Google and Bing confirmed that they use social signals in determining ranking, including data from Twitter and Facebook. Matt Cutts confirmed that this was a relatively new development for Google, although many SEOs had long suspected it would happen. Read More.

Instant Previews — November 1, 2010 A magnifying glass icon appeared on Google search results, allowing search visitors to quickly view a preview of landing pages directly from SERPs. This signaled a renewed focus for Google on landing page quality, design, and usability. Read More. 18

Google Instant — September 1, 2010 Expanding on Google Suggest, Google Instant launched, displaying search results as a query was being typed. SEOs everywhere nearly spontaneously combusted, only to realize that the impact was ultimately fairly small. Read More.

Brand Update — August 1, 2010 Although not a traditional algorithm update, Google started allowing the same domain to appear multiple times on a SERP. Previously, domains were limited to 1-2 listings, or 1 listing with indented results. Read More.

Caffeine (Rollout) — June 1, 2010 After months of testing, Google finished rolling out the Caffeine infrastructure. Caffeine not only boosted Google's raw speed, but integrated crawling and indexation much more tightly, resulting in (according to Google) a 50% fresher index. Read More.

May Day — May 1, 2010 In late April and early May, webmasters noticed significant drops in their long-tail traffic. Matt Cutts later confirmed that May Day was an algorithm change impacting the long-tail. Sites with large-scale thin content seemed to be hit especially hard, foreshadowing the Panda update. Read More.

Google Places — April 1, 2010 Although "Places" pages were rolled out in September of 2009, they were originally only a part of Google Maps. The official launch of Google Places re-branded the Local Business Center, integrated Places pages more closely with local search results, and added a number of features, including new local advertising options. Read More.

Real-time Search — December 1, 2009 This time, real-time search was for real- Twitter feeds, Google News, newly indexed content, and a number of other sources were integrated into a real-time feed on some SERPs. Sources continued to expand over time, including social media. Read More.

Caffeine (Preview) — August 1, 2009 Google released a preview of a massive infrastructure change, designed to speed crawling, expand the index, and integrate indexation and ranking in nearly real-time. The timeline spanned months, with the final rollout starting in the US in early 2010 and lasting until the summer. Read More.

Vince — February 1, 2009 SEOs reported a major update that seemed to strongly favor big brands. Matt Cutts called Vince a "minor change", but others felt it had profound, long-term implications. Read More.

Rel-canonical Tag — February 1, 2009 Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo jointly announced support for the Canonical Tag, allowing webmasters to send canonicalization signals to search bots without impacting human visitors. Read More. 19

Google Suggest — August 1, 2008 In a major change to their logo-and-a-box home-page Google introduced Suggest, displaying suggested searches in a dropdown below the search box as visitors typed their queries. Suggest would later go on to power Google Instant. Read More.

Dewey — April 1, 2008 A large-scale shuffle seemed to occur at the end of March and into early April, but the specifics were unclear. Some suspected Google was pushing its own internal properties, including , but the evidence of that was limited. Read More.

Buffy — June 1, 2007 In honor of Vanessa Fox leaving Google, the "Buffy" update was christened. No one was quite sure what happened, and Matt Cutts suggested that Buffy was just an accumulation of smaller changes. Read More.

Universal Search — May 1, 2007 While not your typical algorithm update, Google integrated traditional search results with News, Video, Images, Local, and other verticals, dramatically changing their format. The old 10-listing SERP was officially dead. Long live the old 10-listing SERP. Read More.

False Alarm — December 1, 2006 There were stirrings about an update in December, along with some reports of major ranking changes in November, but Google reported no major changes.

Supplemental Update — November 1, 2006 Throughout 2006, Google seemed to make changes to the supplemental index and how filtered pages were treated. They claimed in late 2006 that supplemental was not a penalty (even if it sometimes felt that way). Read More.

Big Daddy — December 1, 2005 Technically, Big Daddy was an infrastructure update (like the more recent "Caffeine"), and it rolled out over a few months, wrapping up in March of 2006. Big Daddy changed the way Google handled URL canonicalization, redirects (301/302) and other technical issues. Read More.

Google Local/Maps — October 1, 2005 After launching the Local Business Center in March 2005 and encouraging businesses to update their information, Google merged its Maps data into the LBC, in a move that would eventually drive a number of changes in local SEO. Read More.

Jagger — October 1, 2005 Google released a series of updates, mostly targeted at low-quality links, including reciprocal links, link farms, and paid links. Jagger rolled out in at least 3 stages, from roughly September to November of 2005, with the greatest impact occurring in October. Read More. 20

Gilligan — September 1, 2005 Also called the "False" update webmasters saw changes (probably ongoing), but Google claimed no major algorithm update occurred. Matt Cutts wrote a blog post explaining that Google updated (at the time) index data daily but Toolbar PR and some other metrics only once every 3 months. Read More.

XML — June 1, 2005 Google allowed webmasters to submit XML sitemaps via Webmaster Tools, bypassing traditional HTML sitemaps, and giving SEOs direct (albeit minor) influence over crawling and indexation. Read More.

Personalized Search — June 1, 2005 Unlike previous attempts at personalization, which required custom settings and profiles, the 2005 roll-out of personalized search tapped directly into users' search histories to automatically adjust results. Although the impact was small at first, Google would go on to use search history for many applications. Read More.

Bourbon — May 1, 2005 "GoogleGuy" (likely Matt Cutts) announced that Google was rolling out "something like 3.5 changes in search quality." No one was sure what 0.5 of a change was, but Webmaster World members speculated that Bourbon changed how duplicate content and non-canonical (www vs. non-www) URLs were treated. Read More.

Allegra — February 1, 2005 Webmasters witnessed ranking changes, but the specifics of the update were unclear. Some thought Allegra affected the "sandbox" while others believed that LSI had been tweaked. Additionally, some speculated that Google was beginning to penalize suspicious links. Read More.

Nofollow — January 1, 2005 To combat spam and control outbound link quality, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft collectively introduce the "nofollow" attribute. Nofollow helps clean up unvouched for links, including spammy blog comments. While not a traditional algorithm update, this change gradually has a significant impact on the link graph. Read More.

Google IPO — August 1, 2004 Although obviously not an algorithm update, a major event in Google's history - Google sold 19M shares, raised $1.67B in capital, and set their market value at over $20B. By January 2005, Google share prices more than doubled. Read More.

Brandy — February 1, 2004 Google rolled out a variety of changes, including a massive index expansion, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), increased attention to anchor text relevance, and the concept of link "neighborhoods." LSI expanded Google's ability to understand synonyms and took keyword analysis to the next level. Read More 21

Austin — January 1, 2004 What Florida missed, Austin came in to clean up. Google continued to crack-down on deceptive on- page tactics, including invisible text and META-tag stuffing. Some speculated that Google put the "Hilltop" algorithm into play and began to take page relevance seriously. Read More.

Florida — November 1, 2003 This was the update that put updates (and probably the SEO industry) on the map. Many sites lost ranking, and business owners were furious. Florida sounded the death knell for low-value late 90s SEO tactics, like keyword stuffing, and made the game a whole lot more interesting. Read More.

Supplemental Index — September 1, 2003 In order to index more documents without sacrificing performance, Google split off some results into the "supplemental" index. The perils of having results go supplemental became a hotly debated SEO topic, until the index was later reintegrated. Read More.

Fritz — July 1, 2003 The monthly "Google Dance" finally came to an end with the "Fritz" update. Instead of completely overhauling the index on a roughly monthly basis, Google switched to an incremental approach. The index was now changing daily. Read More.

Esmeralda — June 1, 2003 This marked the last of the regular monthly Google updates, as a more continuous update process began to emerge. The "Google Dance" was replaced with "Everflux". Esmerelda probably heralded some major infrastructure changes at Google.

Dominic — May 1, 2003 While many changes were observed in May, the exact nature of Dominic was unclear. Google bots "Freshbot" and "Deepcrawler" scoured the web, and many sites reported bounces. The way Google counted or reported seemed to change dramatically. Read More.

Cassandra — April 1, 2003 Google cracked down on some basic link-quality issues, such as massive linking from co-owned domains. Cassandra also came down hard on hidden text and hidden links.

Boston — February 1, 2003 Announced at SES Boston, this was the first named Google update. Originally, Google aimed at a major monthly update, so the first few updates were a combination of algorithm changes and major index refreshes (the so-called "Google Dance"). As updates became more frequent, the monthly idea quickly died. 22

1st Documented Update — September 1, 2002 Before "Boston" (the first named update), there was a major shuffle in the Fall of 2002. The details are unclear, but this appeared to be more than the monthly Google Dance and PageRank update. As one webmaster said of Google: "they move the toilet mid stream". Read More.

Google Toolbar — December 1, 2000 Guaranteeing SEO arguments for years to come, Google launched their browser toolbar, and with it, Toolbar PageRank (TBPR). As soon as webmasters started watching TBPR, the Google Dance began. Read More.