A Look Back And Forward At Google SEO Updates

We all know that Google can make or break a website with its SEO rankings. Everyone wants to be ranked high on Google’s list, but many of us can’t figure out just how to do that. A big reason: Google uses over 200 SEO factors to rate their pages, and these factors will only continue to grow and change in 2013.

Looking at some of the 2012 updates Google made as well as some of the updates Google expects to make this year is a great way to get a well-rounded understanding of SEO. Before getting into specific updates, below explains the three major areas where we often see Google updates:

Google Panda. Panda was put in place by Google to penalize sites that offered poor quality or little quality content to their pages. Google could penalize an entire site if it was found to have a lot of keywords, but with very little content for the reader. Panda updates don’t happen on scheduled dates; however Google usually announces when one is coming. If they don’t, you can be sure that the SEO blogs will!
Google Penguin. Penguin was put into place by Goggle to target web spam, such as keyword stuffing. The update would decrease rankings on sites that they believe were not following their existing quality guidelines. Many sites found that their traffic decreased quite a bit when Penguin came out. Like Panda, if your site had low quality content, it was likely targeted by Penguin, and again, this left many site owners wondering how to fix the problem and make it “Penguin friendly.”
Google+ Local. This social network quickly became the way to search local search optimization. It is a good idea for a site to open its own Google+ page in order to better serve their customers by giving them the most information about their product and themselves as they can. The updates that Google makes to Google+ are not like Panda and Penguin because it has to do with your activity and your Google+ profile (as opposed to your direct website).

Google Past and Future Updates for 2013

No one knows for sure what Google will do in the future, but it’s safe to say they will do some updating. Below are a few updates we saw in 2012 (information thanks to Search Engine Land) and a few we might see in 2013:
Notable 2012 Google Updates

March 23, 2012. Panda Update 12 affected about 1.6 percent of search queries.
June 25, 2012. Panda Update 16 affected about 1 percent of search queries.
July 24, 2012. Panda Update 17 affected about 1 percent of search queries.
September 27, 2012. Panda Update 20 affected 2.4 percent of English queries.
October 8, 2012. Penguin Data Refresh Update affected .3 percent of English queries.
December 21, 2012. Panda Update 23 affected 1.3 percent of English queries.

You will notice that most of the updates we saw in 2012 did not affect a large portion of searches (1 percent is still a huge number when discussing Google, but it could be worse!). In past years companies have not been so lucky, so 2013 should be interesting.
Possible Future 2013 Google Updates
We have already seen a few updates in 2013 (Panda 24 happened on January 22), but there are a few changes that experts have predicted:

An update about Author Rank. Google will surely create some sort of algorithm change that gives certain authoritative authors precedence over other authors. This update will be different than any update of the past, so many are anxiously waiting.
An update about Equivalency Score Algorithm. Many experts are calling this the ESA. This will likely be an update that causes different results to show up each time the same query is searched. It’s tough to wrap your head around, but give all companies an equal opportunity.
An update using the Link Disavow Tool. This tool was just announced this past year, so Google will surely create some sort of algorithm that uses the information this tool generates.

All sites want the highest possible ranking from Google that they can get, and with this being said, it’s a good idea to know and understand the current SEO pages that Google has set into place. Whatever Google has in store for us for 2013 is anyone’s guess, but we can be sure that all eyes will be on Google’s next move.
Amanda DiSilvestro