The Complete Google Algorithm Update Resource

As we all know, Google has been improving its search results since it began back in 1997. Their goal is to make sure that they return the most relevant search results possible, in the fastest way possible. It’s said that Google makes 400 updates a year. That number amounts to a minimum of one update per day.

While some of the updates released were subtle or quite unnoticeable, others hit hard and changed how a whole nation saw their SERPs and how marketers do their SEO campaigns.

What are they? Well, let’s go through all of major algorithm updates to see what patterns form throughout the years.

Google Update February 2003 (Boston)
TARGET

  • Incoming links
  • Targeted phrases
  • Unique content

EFFECT

  • Noticeable decrease in backlinks
  • Heavily cross-loaded linked sites penalized
  • Lower Page Rank of the same sites

Google Update: February 2003 (Cassandra)
TARGET

  • Hidden texts
  • Hidden links
  • Massive internal linking of co-owned sites

EFFECT

  • Massive index update
  • Lesser spam

Google Update: February 2003 (Dominic)

TARGET

  • Back Links

EFFECT

  • Cut-down on back linking
  • Change in link weighting
  • Drop in PageRank

Google Update: June 2003 (Esmeralda)
TARGET

  • Page content
  • Introduced Everflux

EFFECT

  • Lesser spam
  • Up to date information

Google Update: November 2003 (Florida)
TARGET

  • Keyword stuffing
  • Linking
  • Low-value SEO techniques

EFFECT

  • Road block for Black Hat SEO techniques
  • Removal of fishy back links

Google Update: January 2004 (Austin)

TARGET

  • Invisible texts
  • Meta elements
  • Keyword density

EFFECT

  • Penalizing of suspicious sites
  • Banning of spam sites

Google Update: February 2004 (Brandy)
TARGET

  • Anchor text relevance
  • Latent Semantic Indexing

EFFECT

  • Authority sites picked up rank

Google Update: February 2005 (Allegra)

TARGET

  • Suspicious looking links
  • Spam sites

EFFECT

  • Drop in rankings for sites with low-quality link exchanges

Google Update: May 2005 (Bourbon)

TARGET

  • Duplicate content
  • Non-canonical URLs

EFFECT

  • Removal of 302 Pagejacking

Google Update: October 2005 (Jagger)

TARGET

  • Low-quality links
  • Link farms
  • Paid links
  • Reciprocal links

EFFECT

  • Cut down on irrelevant reciprocal linking

Google Update: February 2006 (Big Daddy)

TARGET

  • Inbound links
  • Outbound links
  • Suspected spam sites

EFFECT

  • Suspected spam sites placed under supplemental category
  • Some highly suspicious sites removed from the index

Google Update: August 2009 (Caffeine)

TARGET

  • Indexing

EFFECT

  • Fresher search results
  • Sites that ranked previously were topped by newer results with more relevant content.

Google Update: February 2011 (Panda)

TARGET

  • Content farms
  • Scraped content
  • Content depth

EFFECT

  • Companies layoff workers
  • 11% of US websites are affected.

Google Update: April 2012 (Penguin)

TARGET

  • Over optimisation
  • Link buying
  • Keyword stuffing

EFFECT

  • 3.1% of search queries

Google Update: Oct. 2012 (Penguin 2.1)

Google Update: Sept. 2013 (Hummingbird)

TARGET

  • Improvement in semantic search

EFFECT

  • Conversation recognition
  • Long tailed queries better understood
  • Caters to mobile users

Google Update: Oct. 2014 (Penguin 3.0)

Post-Update Effects

Who was affected?

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