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Google Algorithm Updates & Changes: A Complete History
Google Algorithm Updates & Changes: A Complete History
Introduction
Ever heard of the motivational speech that nothing is built perfectly? Well, the same goes for Google as well. The world’s favorite search engine was never built perfectly. It was made perfect by a series of updates that the company added later as they progressed. The updates caused google to become what it's like. Anything that is built by keeping in mind that it will become better over time with the series of updates. The same goes for Google as well. When Larry and Sergey decided to build google, they never expected It to be what it is nowadays. New features and updates were added to google by a series of updates and this caused the engine to become what is nowadays.
A brief history of updates in Google algorithm
When google was built in the starting, it was a simple search engine that was built to help people find the web pages that had the information that was needed by the user. There was nothing of sort of SEO numbering or indexing feature in the earliest google. These all were added later was the company progressed to make the google better. Let’s see what are the major updates that were made in the google, that made it what it is nowadays.
Panda
Panda was the first update of google that revolutionized it. It added the SEO feature to google and allowed it to rank the website according to the data that is inside the website. It searches through the website and checked whether the information that was inside the webpage genuine or not. This helped to deal with the SEO specialized websites, affiliate websites, and the website that had minimum data in it.
Venice
Venice update was another update that came in 2012. This update focused on making the google more local to the user. With this update, the user was able to search and get information that is related local to them. This makes searching easier for Google users. It was now able to get information local and international to the user easily.
Penguin
Penguin update which also came in 2012 was a big update that mainly focused on making the website more secure and useful. The penguin update helped to check the backlinks that are embedded in one’s site. While doing so, it was able to prevent itself from getting fooled by the website who used to pay for links being added to their website. The company sued to do this, as it made them look more authenticate and boost their rank on the google index.
Pirate
The pirate update released in 2012, was done to tackle the copyright content that was done at that time. It prevented the copyright content from gaining more popularity and also started having negative rankings for the website that had copyright content in them. This helped the people to get real and original content on the website.
Hummingbird
The groundwork for laying off the voice search feature of google began with the Hummingbird update which was done in 2013. Before the Hummingbird update, the google search engine would just use to take in specific words out of the phrase put by the user. However, after the update, it made the user check every word and make sure that the website contains that word or not. Due to this update, Google was able to parse every word of the query and understand its meaning.
Pigeon
The pigeon update which was released in 2014 helped google to focus on the local SEO that was inside it. It helped Google to make the search results better and it also helped to make the google maps better. After this update, Google can pinpoint the location of the user easily.
HTTPS/SSL
Google emphasizes the user security greatly and so it launched it to update HTTP/SSL in 2014. The update helped google to become more secure and stable. This helped the google to secure an established connection between the user and prevent any data leak or data loss of the user.
Mobile update
After 2015, many people use Google as a search engine not only on computer or laptop but also on phone. By 2015, 40% of the search result that occurred in google was due to the mobile phone. The mobile update of google helped to enhance the google speed and interface on the mobile front.
RankBrain
The year 2015 was the year that made google stepped into the zone of machine learning. After the RankBrain update, google started using the machine learning algorithm to handle the queries that were listed on google. It also helped google to understand or interpret the meaning of the words that have no meaning or were gibberish.
Possum
The possum update helped to make the search result of google more valid. Not only that, but these updates also helped the google to rank the search results for a person locally. This means that the search results were now ranked based upon the query you type and your location. These helped the search result to become more precise and correct.
Speed update (Mobile)
After 2015, the number of people who used the google search engine on the phone kept on increasing. They increased at a tremendous speed and so Google decided to update the speed of their searching. This update helps the mobile users of Google to search and get information about their choice more quickly and easily.
Medic
This update was aimed to help and assist in the search results of the medical institution. It helped to delist many sites from the google webpage and allowed many websites to come to the surface which provides better content and matched the result query produced by the user. This helped to make the google more user friendly and usable. It was launched in 2018.
