Pleasanton Web Design

May Flowers

By far the most significant change Google has made in their algorithm since the now infamous Panda Update of February 2011, has been Google Penguin(which hit the SERPS on April 24 of this year).

The biggest change brought by Google Penguin was that it penalized sites for what was, up until it was unleashed, the common practice of using target keywords in anchor text. It has always been a good practice to vary anchor text to show Google a natural link profile, put Penguin made the practice an absolute necessity. In fact, for some websites that had done significant link building using the same anchor text over and over, it made more sense to start over from scratch, rather than trying to go back and edit or remove each link, one by one.

May 2012 Updates

In the wake of Penguin and its continuing updates, last month Google announced an additional set of changes that were implemented in May of 2012 and announced on their blog.

Extensive list

• Deeper detection of hacked pages. [launch codename "GPGB", project codename "Page Quality"]
• Autocomplete predictions used as refinements. [launch codename "Alaska", project codename “Refinements”].
• More predictions for Japanese users. [project codename "Autocomplete
• Improvements to autocomplete on Mobile. [launch codename "Lookahead", project codename "Mobile"]
• Fewer arbitrary predictions. [launch codename "Axis5", project codename "Autocomplete"] Improved IME in autocomplete. [launch codename "ime9", project codename "Translation and Internationalization"]
• New segmenters for Asian languages. [launch codename "BeautifulMind”]
• Scoring and infrastructure improvements for Google Books pages in Universal Search.[launch codename “Utgo”, project codename “Indexing”]
• Unified Soccer feature. [project codename "Answers"]
• Improvements to NBA search feature. [project codename "Answers"]
• New Golf search feature. [project codename "Answers"]
• Improvements to ranking for news results. [project codename "News"]
• Better application of inorganic backlinks signals. [launch codename "improv-fix", project codename "Page Quality"]
• Improvements to Penguin. [launch codename "twref2", project codename "Page Quality"]
• Trigger alt title when HTML title is truncated. [launch codename "tomwaits", project codename "Snippets"]
• Efficiency improvements in alternative title generation. [launch codename "TopOfTheRock", project codename "Snippets
• Better demotion of boilerplate anchors in alternate title generation. [launch codename "otisredding", project codename "Snippets"]
• Internationalizing music rich snippets. [launch codename "the kids are disco dancing", project codename "Snippets"]
•  Music rich snippets on mobile. [project codename "Snippets"]
• Improvement to SafeSearch goes international. [launch codename "GentleWorld", project codename "SafeSearch"]
• Simplification of term-scoring algorithms. [launch codename "ROLL", project codename "Query Understanding"]
• Fading results to white for Google Instant. [project codename "Google Instant
• Better detection of major new events. [project codename "Freshness"]
• Smoother ranking functions for freshness. [launch codename "flsp", project codename "Freshness"]
• Better detection of searches looking for fresh content. [launch codename "Pineapples", project codename "Freshness"]
• Freshness algorithm simplifications. [launch codename “febofu", project codename "Freshness"]
• Updates to +Pages in right-hand panel. [project codename “Social Search”]
• Performance optimizations in our ranking algorithm. [launch codename "DropSmallCFeature"]
• Simpler logic for serving results from diverse domains. [launch codename "hc1", project codename "Other Ranking Components"]
• Precise location option on tablet. [project codename “Mobile”]
• Improvements to local search on tablet. [project codename “Mobile”]
• Internationalization of “recent” search feature on mobile. [project codename "Mobile"]

This is a lot of information to dig through, and I will be posting explanations on selected items in future posts. By scanning the list you can get an idea of where Google has its priorities. The emphasis I see is on serving fresh events, international search, search “suggestions,” and Mobile search. Of those, I think mobile is where the focus of small businesses, web designers, and web marketers needs to be now, and in the near future.

Similar Posts:

• Pleasanton Web Design 2012 Wrap
• No. 9: Minor tuning of autocomplete policy algorithms – Google’s 40 Feb 2012 Search Quality Updates
• No. 10: Improved ranking for queries using “site:” operator – Google’s 40 Search Quality Updates
• No. 6: More accurate detection of official pages (Google WRE Update) – Google’s 40 Search Quality Updates
• Local Citation Building Replaces Link Building for Small Business SEO