algorithm-updates

While helping companies deal with major algorithm updates, I tend to field a lot of questions. For example, marketing teams, developers, designers, and even c-level executives tend to pepper me with questions about quality updates, Panda, and other disturbances in the Google force. When answering questions about topics like these, it’s great to respond with … Read more

Nothing says “end of summer” like fading tans, empty propane tanks, sunscreen aversion, and… a fresh quality update. Yes, here we go again… As I mentioned in my post about the May 17, 2017 update, Google seems to be pushing quality updates almost monthly now (refreshing its quality algorithms). That’s great if you are looking to … Read more

We’ve seen our fair share of major core ranking updates this year with an update in early January, then the February 7 update, then Fred on March 7, and then more movement in late April and early May. And just a few weeks from the last update, we witnessed another big core update that rolled out on … Read more

March 7, 2017 will not be forgotten any time soon (at least for SEOs). That’s when a major algorithm update rolled out that impacted many sites across the web. It was named Fred (unfortunately) and there was quite a bit of controversy surrounding the update. Google finally confirmed the update, which is great, but there … Read more

The fall of 2016 was an extremely volatile time from a Google algorithm update standpoint. Actually, I believe it was the most volatile fall I have ever seen. We saw numerous updates from Google, including partial rollbacks. For example, we had Penguin 4 in late September and early October, and then massive volatility in November (with … Read more

Update 2/8/17: We are now a full month into the rollout of the mobile popup algorithm and I am still not seeing widespread impact. I did surface a few examples of urls being impact during the first week of the rollout, but there are still many sites employing mobile popups or interstitials that have not been … Read more

Summary: Yes, it’s happening again. There was a significant Google algorithm update on 11/30/16, following an update on 11/10/16 that was partially reversed on 11/18/16. And the 11/30 update is showing a connection to previous quality updates (AKA Phantom). Let’s explore what’s going on in Google Land. When writing about the November 10, 2016 Google … Read more

{Update: Saturday, November 19, 2016 – I saw reversals starting yesterday, November 18 (both recoveries and drops), which supports my theory that this was the mobile-first index being tested. I have provided more information below at the end of this post about what I’m seeing — including screenshots.} The fall of 2016 has been one of the … Read more

{Updated on 7/4/16 with additional information and screenshots based on the impact from the June algorithm update.} {Updated on 7/6/16 with  information about the gain or loss of rich snippets based on the June update.} {Updated on 7/11/16 with information about Penguin 4.0 from Google’s John Mueller.} Summer is here, and it could be a … Read more

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Well for SEOs, it’s slightly different this year. March came in like lion and went out like a bigger lion. There were three distinct dates where I saw significant movement from an algorithm update standpoint (starting on 3/3, then more on … Read more

A funny thing happened as I was finishing my last blog post about Google’s unconfirmed algorithm updates in 2015. I was getting ready to publish the post and the algo Richter scale in my office started to move – and move quickly. So I held off on publishing the post and waited for more data … Read more