Do you know what Google algorithms are?

Meta description: Google algorithms are updated by google time to time to rank websites that are following the guidelines of the google webmaster.

The main objective of these updates is to refine and remove the thin or spammy content from SERP. So, whenever searcher searches for a query, he will get relevant data from google. It also ranks down those websites that do not contain query-specific content.   

Google algorithm updates

Panda is one of the updates developed by Google, for detecting duplicate and plagiarized content. It is introduced by Google in the year 2011. Earlier people used to submit thin content on their websites. Sometimes, they made their content just by keyword stuffing. With this update, google not only detected the user-generated spam but also deleted them from google search results. So, after writing the relevant content, one can run one’s site for checking content duplication or plagiarism.

Penguin was the second update by the google to detect irrelevant and spammy links created by the users. It was introduced in the year 2012 by google. In the beginning, users used to make spammy links. Through their link network, they used to build links to rank their site. And sometimes the content contained over-optimized anchor text. Google intercepted these sorts of activities and dropped down the ranking of such sites as a penalty. So, google scanned all those sites with spammy or irrelevant links and removed them from SERP with the help of Google disavow links tool. The main objective of google in doing so is to provide relevant data to its users.

Hummingbird was the third update from google for providing quality content to its users. It was introduced in the year 2013 and can be interpreted as an advanced update of Panda. This update gives a refined search of a query, even if the query does not have an exact word, searched by the user. Out of all relevant searches, this update provides the most relevant and appropriate search. Hummingbird automatically down the ranking of those sites that contain thin content and of low quality.

Pigeon was the fourth update introduced by Google in the year 2014. But it was somewhat location-specific. This algorithm gives search results as per the user’s location. So, for promoting a website, one needs to increase one’s reach in the local area. For that off-page SEO is important like directory submission, backlinks building, etc.

Mobile: This algorithm was developed in the year 2015 by google. And the objective behind is to make sites mobile-friendly. And ranking of those sites which are not optimized for mobile, are ranked down by google.

RankBrain update of google is similar to that of Hummingbird algorithm. It was introduced in the year 2015 with an objective to improve the relevant search queries in SERP. It ranks down those sites which contain ambiguous content i.e. not specific content for the corresponding query.

Possum update works where cut-throat competition exists. Possum update is basically for local searches. So, possum provides a number of results for similar queries. If the user is searching something then as per this update google shows him the results of the nearest location with quality output.

Fred update was introduced by Google in the year 2017, to check those websites which were promotion oriented instead of providing relevant information. Those sites which do not comply with the google webmaster guidelines or rules are ranked down by google. So, the user gets refined results in SERP.