Googles Latest Algorithm Change & How it Effects Your Business
One of Google’s software engineers, Amit Singhal, outlined in his blog post that “different searches have different freshness needs”, this has now officially confirmed the start of the new era of Google searches – the aim of giving Internet users what they really want.
So what’s changed?
- Regularly occurring updates
Google will now assume that the searcher is looking for the most up-to-date information. For example, the most recent industry statistics, as opposed to statistics from last year. It seems logical. - Hot topics
The second area is concerned with recent events or hot. When someone is searching for a hot topic, Google will assume that they want the very latest information. - Review updates
The third area is frequent updates. This affects reviews of products and services rather than more news stories. It is now going to be more important than ever to keep an eye on reviews, as they will appear in general search results.
Google hopes this new update will make the search engine more intuitive which may mean that for searches on recent events or news Google may now display top results which may have only been created a few minutes before they show.
In order for businesses to maintain or increase their rankings, websites must host fresh and relevant content and use current industry trends for Google to pick up on and display.
The new shake-up is said to affect 35% of searches; that’s nearly three times as many as Google’s previous Panda update.
Refresh your search marketing
So how can we translate this into practice? The best way websites to benefit from this update is to jump on the hot topics aspect of the update, by having an awareness of and speaking about the latest trends and issues in your industry.
Make sure your business can offer any insightful input into its marketplace
Get uploading content and ensure you use keywords so content can be identified by Google. An efficient and easy way to have sight of trending topics within your industry is to keep an eye on Twitter and then survey industry media sites and competitor comments.
Companies are regularly updating websites with press releases, but can you offer more industry input, in the form of points of view? Setting up feeds to keep on top of the very latest industry news as it breaks will provide daily material to comment on, whether it’s about the market, your competitors or comments on general trends. This only need take 15 – 30 minutes a day and can have a profound impact on your online presence.
It’s crucial that not only is the content new and relevant to your industry, but that it is not duplicated content from elsewhere, hence an emphasis on ‘freshness’ rather than ‘newness’.
Also we are seeing more integrated results, with maps, reviews and paid search creating a more blended Google results page than what we were once familiar with. Local results are also appearing in both local and organic searches – this is another area that you need to make sure they are on top of. This means that businesses need to have all aspects of search covered; having a listing on Google maps, images associated with trending issues and correctly tagging multimedia.
At the end of the day if you or your company are an expert in your field then let the world know about it and Google will help promote you. If you are just trying to cheat the system Google will eventually find you and drop you from it’s listings. Google’s aim is always to show the most relevant information and catch and remove websites that are spamming the internet – so be careful.
