As we all have learned, Google’s search engine algorithm changes every day. Recently it seems that Google has been making more significant changes than usual in a short period of time (or simply telling us about algorithm updates more frequently). Over the past two weeks here are the changes that have been reported.
Exact Match Domain Update – September 28
This update penalizes websites that have low quality exact match domains (ex. seocompanyma.com) that do not provide useful content in relation to the domain name.
Panda 20 – September 27 – October 4
Google has previously announced that Panda updates would be more frequent than their newest Penguin Algorithm. This update overall is designed to reduce rankings for low quality sites, but also rewards high quality sites that have original content and high quality links.
Penguin Update 3 – October 5
Penguin updates have not been as frequent as Panda updates and despite Matt Cutts mentioning the updates would be more dramatic we have not seen a dramatic update this Time. The update only effects approximately 0.3% of queries in English. Overall Penguin is targeted towards webspam and sites that have many low quality spam-like links back to their site.
Page Layout Update – October 9
Most recently is the update of the Page Layout Algorithm which was originally released in January 2012. This algorithm penalizes sites with low quality content or no actual content “above the fold.”
By Jeffrey Pucko