Google's Journey of Changing Its Search Algorithm: Do SEO Practitioners Know About It?

Vu Khoi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

Google has traveled a long road upgrading its search algorithms to better serve users' search intent. This creates no small difficulty for SEO practitioners, who must keep updating to protect their website rankings. Let's look back at some memorable milestones of Google's algorithm over the years.

Google's Algorithm: Know the Rules to Become the Winner!

If you don't fully know and understand how Google works and evaluates websites, you can't do SEO effectively. "Their playground, their rules" — you're on Google's "home turf," and to win you need to master the rules and how the game is played.

How Often Does Google Change Its Algorithm? Do You Really Have to Track Every Update?

Google changes its algorithm very frequently. Experts have estimated that Google refreshes its search algorithm around 500 to 600 times per year — meaning at least 1 or 2 algorithm updates every day. Although most of these changes don't have any significant impact on SEO, there are some very important updates that SEO practitioners must know about so they can quickly adjust their content strategy.

How Do You Stay Fully Updated Without Missing the Latest "Movements" from Google?

There are many ways to learn about Google's latest updates. The most common is checking your website on analytics and ranking platforms for your site's core keywords. Or visit Google's page to see content about the latest algorithm updates.

The 15 Most Notable Google Algorithm Updates to Date

In the content below, we list 15 fairly important Google algorithm updates that anyone doing SEO should probably read at least once.

• The Core Update (May 2022)

This was the first broad Core algorithm update of 2022 and Google's first in more than 6 months. They said it would take up to two weeks to fully roll out. As with all previous Core updates, Google made broad changes to how its ranking systems evaluate content.

• The "Link spam update" (July 2021)

Google launched the "Link spam update" on July 26 of last year, in an effort to neutralize spam links across the web and improve the quality of search results. Google's advice to websites was to keep focusing on content quality and better user-oriented web services, rather than applying black-hat SEO (link manipulation and excessive keyword stuffing).

• Google's Page Experience Update (May 2021)

The Page Experience update created a revolution in the history of Google's algorithm changes. SEO experts had been eagerly awaiting it ever since Google announced it, because it would be applied to the factors used to evaluate website rankings on Google.

So how does Google determine the quality of the user experience? Some key factors evaluated under the Core Web Vitals set — a collection of performance metrics measured from the user's perspective — include:

• page load time

• ad experience

• mobile usability

• security

• HTTPS usage

• Passage Ranking Update (February 2021)

Google updated passage ranking as an additional factor that can affect a website's overall ranking. Passage ranking on Google is based on passage indexing. Google takes information from the content sections of web pages and provides it to respond to a quick search. This update makes specific queries more accurate and reduces the time users spend searching for specific information on Google.

• Google's December 2020 Core Update

The December 2020 update was the biggest update of that year. Like all of Google's Core updates, it had broad reach and directly affected websites and their SEO quality across all languages.

• The October 2020 BERT Update

Although this update didn't directly affect the SEO process, it was still an important moment in the history of Google and its search algorithm.

BERT serves most search results in English and more than 70 other languages. It can be seen as a major step forward for the technology and helped improve Google's accuracy.

• Google's BERT Natural Language Processing Update (October 2019)

Google released a major update in October 2019 that had a considerable impact on search queries over the years and still affects SEO today. In practice, BERT can better understand natural language on web pages and connect that information to search queries.

• Google's August 2018 Core Update – The Medic Update

The Medic update can be called the event that shook the SEO industry. In this update, Google made major fixes to its algorithm. It's called Medic because it affected health, medical, and financial matters. SEO experts inferred that this update raised the rankings of medical and health-related articles and pushed down articles lacking authority or credibility. Google also had to post on its site that it had no fix for the issue, and advised SEO practitioners to focus on improving article quality.

• The Google Fred Algorithm Update (March 2017)

This update was created to curb and filter out low-quality websites. The update is named Fred as a joke by a Google employee, Gary Illyes, who suggested naming Google's later updates "Fred."

Google Fred seemed to strike directly at link accuracy on the web. The rankings of many sites following black-hat SEO strategies plummeted, and some were even taken down and flagged by Google. That's why Google recommends against spamming links and stuffing keywords — it doesn't work, and on the contrary, it harms the site.

• The Google Possum Algorithm Update (September 2016)

Google Possum mainly affected local SEO. This update is based on the user's location and uses filters to deliver better, more relevant local search results. It ruthlessly removed redundant websites with no value to users.

The Possum update aimed to improve the user experience, but some businesses located near other businesses ranked in Google's SERPs were hit quite hard by this algorithm.

• The Google RankBrain Algorithm Update (October 2015)

When Google announced the RankBrain algorithm, many were very surprised, because it changed Google's search habits. RankBrain is an artificial intelligence system that helps Google process search results. This algorithm can monitor behavior and respond to users based on search intent.

• The Mobile Friendly Algorithm Update (April 2015)

The purpose of this update was to improve the rankings of pages optimized for mobile versions. In this update, Google continued to favor websites with mobile-friendly versions over those without. Because so many people now use mobile devices to search for information, optimizing pages for mobile is of utmost importance.

• The Google Hummingbird Algorithm Update (August 2013)

Google named this update to convey precision and speed in delivering the most relevant results based on users' semantics. The goal is that pages matching context and keyword intent will perform better, rather than pages that merely match a few words. Google Hummingbird was designed to apply meaning-based technology to billions of pages from across the web. It also encouraged people in SEO to focus on search results matching the searcher's intent, rather than matching generic keywords.

• Google's Penguin Algorithm Update (April 2012)

This update targeted the removal of spam by assessing the quality of backlinks. Websites with quality content and naturally earned backlinks rank higher than sites using SEO strategies to manipulate rankings.

• Google's Panda Algorithm Update, 2011

This update focused primarily on website content quality. The Panda algorithm evaluates poor-quality content against these criteria:

• No plagiarism, no duplicate content across different pages

• Automated content with excessive keyword stuffing

• Spam-like content

• Word count and content length insufficient for a proper article

• Poor user experience

Overall, keeping up with and following Google's algorithms is not only about securing your website's ranking — in the long run, it also helps us steer the website's development in a healthy, sustainable direction that delivers real value to users. We hope this article has given you plenty of useful information about Google's algorithm.

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