Google Announcement: Algorithm Update

Google announced 40 changes in the ranking algorithm. The most important changes were another Panda update and changes in the way Google evaluates links. How do these changes affect the rankings of your web pages?



Google's Panda 3.3 update

Google announced the following:

"Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web."

This sounds similar to the Panda update that Google released in January. That update was described as a 'data refresh'. That means that Google probably didn't add new ranking signals.

New backlink evaluation

Google's announcement about the new backlink evaluation leaves much room for speculation:

"Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable."

Google does not go into more detail and it's hard to tell what the exact method of link analysis that they used for several years is. It's likely that they probably turned off a method that is abused by many spammers.

Many more changes

In addition to the changes above, Google announced many more changes: more coverage for related searches, a tweak to the categorizer for expanded sitelinks, less duplication in expanded sitelinks, more accurate detection of official pages, improved local results and more.

What does this mean to the rankings of your web pages?

Google is working hard on eliminating spam from the result pages. If you use spammy techniques to promote your website, chances are that your rankings will drop.

The backlink evaluation change indicates that Google found a way to deal with manipulated backlinks. If you participate in automated linking schemes, your website might get into trouble.

If you want to get lasting results on Google, you have to use ethical search engine optimization methods that play by the rules. Do not use automated link building systems but try to get high quality backlinks to your website.

Google Friendly Page Layout Algorithm & Penalty

Google announced a new algorithm change that looks at your page layout and if the ads above the fold are excessive, your site can be penalized and downgraded in the search results. This comes with no surprise to me and others, because 10 weeks ago, Matt Cutts announced that this is something Google is working towards. Google wrote: We've heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it's difficult to find the actual content, they aren't happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don't have much content "above-the-fold" can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn't have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward. Google released a special tool at browsersize.googlelabs.com to help you visualize if your site may or was impacted by this. Here is how this site looks:

We seem to be okay, but what about Google's own search results. Well, Google won't let you plug in their own URLs into the tool, so it is hard to tell but I doubt they would pass the test.

Danny Sullivan, as well as many others, go through the hypocrisy with this new penalty and how Google is doing the exact opposite. Not only that, they recommend to their AdSense customers to place ads top heavy so users click on them. Here is their ad map:

That being said, the algorithm is out, if you were hit, you would probably know by now. To fix it, remove some of those ads, and wait and wait until Google pushes out an update. It can takes weeks. If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site. Who is affected? Google said 1 in every 100 searches are. If you read the forums, almost every thread talks about how Google is doing one thing and saying the other. Get your website designed in a best Google friendly layout by our Affordable Website Design Services India. Source

SEO Mistakes to avoid!

Most of the times your SEO agencies make some silly mistakes and your SEO campaign smash. Find below the reasons why your SEO Campaign didn’t worked or isn't working and how to fix it and make work for you:

1. Sometimes SEO’s make a mistake of aiming too high competitive keyword rather than aiming for a moderately competitive keyword with has decent amount of search traffic.

2. Understand your niche and requirement properly and utilize your resources across three key areas: keyword research, on-page content development and link building.

3. When targeting particular keyword, don’t just try to rank for one, two or three terms but keep the variations in mind and target groups. These variations will rank fast and will drive in more traffic.

4. Don’t keep jumping from plan A to B to C and then back to plan A, instead make a solid plan based on current market research and stick to it in order to succeed with your SEO campaign. Stay focused!

5. Most Important - Make sure that you have on-page content development strategy all set as content is still the KING!

6. Focus on quality link building and don’t just drop links on any page using any anchor text. Make sure you're targeting the right selection of “exact” terms – as these are the terms that you can realistically rank for.

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Google Improves Multilingual Support

Google Improves Multilingual Support With Markup

Google announced better support for webmasters to communicate their multilingual content to Google with a new link element markup.

Googler, Pierre Far, said on Google +:

“Do you work with multiregional or multilingual websites? Whether you use the same content on all sites (with minor differences, say localized pricing) or you fully translate your content, you can now annotate pages to help us consolidate the signals of such pages and also help us show the correct regional page to users in search.”

Here is how it works:

Imagine you have an English language page hosted at http://www.example.com/, with a Spanish alternative at http://es.example.com/. You can indicate to Google that the Spanish URL is the Spanish-language equivalent of the English page in one of two ways:

· HTML link element. In the HTML section of http://www.example.com/, add alink element pointing to the Spanish version of that webpage at http://es.example.com/, like this:

· HTTP header. If you publish non-HTML files (like PDFs), you can use an HTTP header to indicate a different language version of a URL:

Link: ; rel="alternate"; hreflang="es"

If you have multiple language versions of a URL, each language page in the set must userel="alternate" hreflang="x" to identify the other language versions. For example, if your site provides content in French, English, and Spanish, the Spanish version must include a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link to both the English and the French versions, and the English and French versions must each include a similar link pointing to each other and to the Spanish site.

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