What is Google Algorithm?

What is Google Algorithm? Why is it important?

Google ranking systems are designed to do just that: sort through hundreds of billions of web pages in Google’s search index to find the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second, and present them in a way that helps you find what you’re looking for.

These ranking systems are made up of not one, but a whole series of?algorithms.?To give you the most useful information,?Search algorithms?look at many factors, including the?words of your query, relevance, and usability of pages, the expertise of sources, and your location and settings.

The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query—for example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.

To help ensure Search algorithms meet high standards of?relevance and quality, Google has a rigorous process that involves both live tests and thousands of trained external Search Quality Raters from around the world.

These Quality Raters follow strict guidelines that define our goals for Search algorithms and are publicly available for anyone to see.

The Google search algorithm refers to the internal process that Google uses to rank content. It takes a number of factors into account when determining these rankings, such as the relevance and quality of the content against a particular search query.

Before we go deeper into what exactly these factors are, though, it’s a good idea to first understand the broader context of the Google ranking process.

This process is split into the following three stages:

Crawling:?The first stage involves Google’s bots (the infamous “spiders”) crawling the web and looking for new or updated web pages. In general, the more links a page has to it, the easier it is for Google to locate it. Pages need to be crawled and indexed in order to rank.

Indexing:?Google’s next step is to analyze these URLs and try to figure out what each page is about. It does this by looking closely at the content, images, and other media files on the page, and then stores this information in a huge database known as the Google index. It’s vital during these first two stages that your technical SEO is in good order, and that your sitemap, headers, and tags have been configured properly.

Serving:?The final step is to determine which of these pages are the most relevant and helpful for a particular search query. This is known as the ranking stage, and this is where the Google search algorithm comes in.

>> Projecting the algorithms in reverse sequential order

March 18, 2022 - Spring 2022 Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update

Google may have started to release another Google search ranking algorithm update starting Friday,?March 18th. This is?an unconfirmed update, Marketers have interacted with the SEO community and also the tracking tools are picking up on it. Marketers are calling this as?Spring 2022 Google search ranking update?- since this is the first day of Spring today (Author’s Location ).

December 1, 2021 - December 2021 Product Review Update

Google announced via the Google Search Central Twitter account that the December 2021 Product Review Update began rolling out for English language pages today, and is estimated to take three weeks to complete. They shared a link to a blog post on product review updates and your website for more information.

November 17, 2021 - Broad Core Update

Google Search Central announced via Twitter that a broad core update would be released later that day. They referred webmasters to their documentation on what site owners need to know about core updates, last updated in August 2019.

November 3, 2021 - Google Spam Update

According to a tweet from Google Search Liasion, a spam update was rolled out from November 3 – 11, 2021 as a part of their regular work to improve search results. They suggested in their announcement that webmasters should continue following Webmaster Guidelines.

July 26, 2021 - Google Link Spam Algorithm Update

Google announced an algorithm update aimed at identifying and nullifying link spam was beginning to roll out. Google warned that any sites taking part in link spam tactics could see ranking changes – with sponsored, guest, and affiliate content most likely to be impacted. Google said the update should be fully rolled out in “at least” two weeks and will impact multiple languages.

July 12, 2021 - Core Update Completed

Google Search Liaison confirmed via Twitter that the July 2021 Core Update rollout was effectively completed on July 12th. No additional details were provided.

July 1, 2021 - Core Update

Google Search Liaison announced via Twitter that the July 2021 Core Update is rolling out and will take one to two weeks to complete. Google’s guidance for core updates can be found on the Google Search Central Blog.

June 28, 2021 - Spam Update Part 2

Google Search Liaison announced via Twitter that the second part of their spam update has begun on June 28th and will likely be completed on the same day. The original announcement referred to a post on the Google Search Central Blog, updated in April 2021, on how Google fought Search spam in 2020.

June 23, 2021 - Spam Update

Google’s Danny Sullivan announced via Twitter that an algorithm update targeted at fighting spam was rolling out to search results. The rollout of the update was to be completed the same day. He added that a second spam update would follow within a week. Google revealed no specific details on what this update was targeting.

June 15, 2021 - Page Experience Update

Google confirms that its long-awaited Page Experience update has started rolling out. Sites should not expect to see drastic changes as a result of this update, Google says, and any sudden drops or spikes should be mitigated by the gradual rollout process. The rollout will be completed by the end of August 2021.

June 10, 2021 - Known Victims Protection

Google Fellow and Vice President of Search, published a post on The Keyword blog. In it, he discussed Google’s work towards improving the algorithm to demote sites that “employ exploitative removals practices” and “predatory practices.” He also shared a link people can use to report online harassment.

June 2, 2021 - Broad Core Algorithm Update

Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan announced via Twitter that a broad core algorithm update was about to be released. Sullivan also noted that some planned improvements weren’t quite ready for this update, so the parts that weren’t ready will be rolled out as part of a second, related broad core algorithm update, scheduled for July.

April 8, 2021 - Product Reviews Update

This new search ranking algorithm update was designed to reward “product reviews that share in-depth research, rather than thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” In their announcement, Google also shared nine useful questions to consider when creating and publishing product reviews.

February 10, 2021 - Passage Ranking

Google’s Public Liaison for Search, Danny Sullivan, announced via Twitter that Passage Ranking officially launched for English-language queries in the United States. According to Google: “This change doesn’t mean we’re indexing individual passages independently of pages. We’re still indexing pages and considering info about entire pages for ranking. But now we can also consider passages from pages as an additional ranking factor….”

December 3, 2020 - December 2020 Core Update

Google confirms a core algorithm update, the December 2020 Core Update, is rolled out on December 3, 2020. This is the third core algorithm update of the calendar year. A fair amount of time has passed since the last core update, compared to the average time between these types of updates.

May 4, 2020 - May 2020 Core Update

Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan announced via Twitter that Google would be releasing a broad core algorithm update. About 90 minutes later, he announced the update was underway and would take 1-2 weeks to completely roll out.

January 22, 2020 - Featured Snippet Deduplication

Google’s Danny Sullivan confirmed via Twitter that web pages in a featured snippet position will no longer be repeated in regular Page 1 organic listing. This change affected 100% of all search listings, worldwide.

January 13, 2020 - January 2020 Core Update

Google’s Danny Sullivan announced via a tweet that a broad core algorithm update was about to be released. Google again provided the same guidance as for all other recent broad core algorithm updates.

December 9, 2019 - BERT (Worldwide)

Google’s Danny Sullivan tweeted that BERT was beginning its worldwide rollout, and included the following languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azeri, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified & Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian Malay (Brunei Darussalam & Malaysia), Malayalam, Maltese, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tajik, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, and Vietnamese.

October 25, 2019 - BERT Update

Google announced the BERT Update, calling it the biggest change to Google search in the past 5 years. Google uses BERT models to better understand search queries. Google said this change impacted both search rankings and featured snippets and BERT (which stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) will be used on 10 percent of U.S. English searches.

September 24, 2019 - Broad Core Algorithm Update

Google’s Danny Sullivan announced via a tweet that a broad core algorithm update would be released within a few hours and it would take a few days to complete rolling out. Google’s guidance was the same as it had been for all other recent core algorithm updates.

June 2, 2019 - June 2019 Core Update

On June 2, Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan tweeted that Google would be releasing a new broad core algorithm update on June 3. The next day, Google confirmed the update was live and would be rolling out to its various data centers over the coming days. As is the case with any broad core algorithm update, Google tells us there is nothing specific to fix because a core update encompasses a broad range of factors.

March 12, 2019 - March 2019 Core Update (a.k.a. Florida 2)

Google’s Search Liaison Danny Sullivan confirmed via Twitter the release of a global broad core algorithm update. SEJ confirmed that this update is particularly important and one of the biggest Google updates in years. Sullivan once again recommended following the guidance it provided following the March 9, 2018 update.

February 13, 2019 - Valentine’s Day Update

Algorithm trackers and industry chatter indicated some sort of unconfirmed update took place on and before this date. However, unlike other updates, mostly positive changes in rankings were being reported.

October 31, 2018 - Unconfirmed Halloween Update

Some webmasters reported changes starting around Halloween, perhaps indicating an (unconfirmed) Google update. But there was little evidence of a significant update here. The more likely cause of the chatter was spillover from the August broad core algorithm update and Google ramping up its use of neural matching.

September 27, 2018 - A "Small" Update

On September 27 (Google’s 20th birthday), many within the SEO community began noticing significant spikes and drops in traffic, indicating some sort of update was underway. Some of the sites impacted by the August broad core algorithm update reportedly made a recovery. Google’s Search Liaison Danny Sullivan confirmed via Twitter on September 29 that some sort of “smaller” update had taken place (but it wasn’t a broad core algorithm update).

August 1, 2018 - Broad Core Algorithm Update

Google confirmed via Twitter for the third time this year the rollout of a broad core algorithm update. In doing so, Google’s Search Liaison Danny Sullivan recommended following the guidance it provided following the March 9, 2018 update. This update has been referred to as “Medic” by some in the industry, even though Google said it was a general ranking update and wasn’t specifically targeting medical sites.

Medic UpdateThis Google update of 2018 hit millions of websites with new ranking factors taken from Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines document.

The Medic update is so-called because it affected health, medical, and other life-altering decision-based websites. These websites were known as Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) because of their potential effect on either your money or health.

April 16, 2018 - Broad Core Algorithm Update

Google confirmed via Twitter the release of another broad core algorithm update and indicated it was similar to the March 9, 2018 update, which was about content relevance.

March 9, 2018 - Broad Core Algorithm Update

On March 12, Google confirmed via Twitter that a “broad core algorithm update” had rolled out the prior week. While Google was light on details, Google said the changes were meant to “benefit pages that were previously under-rewarded,” and advised everyone to “continue building great content.”

December 12, 2017 - Maccabees Update

Some in the search community reported their websites being hit by updates between December 12 and 14. Google confirmed several minor changes to the core algorithm during the timeframe but downplayed the significance of the period of flux.

September 8, 2017 - Fall Flux

Industry chatter and SEO tracking tools indicated some sort of (still unconfirmed) Google update may have occurred on this date. Glenn Gabe, president of G-Squared Interactive, also detected several noteworthy Google changes impacting traffic and search visibility starting September 8. This was followed by additional volatility and fluctuations on September 18, 25, and 29, as well as October 4, 8, and 12.

August 19, 2017 - Quality Update

Webmasters and SEO ranking tools detected some minor volatility on August 19-20, with signs indicating this may have been another (unconfirmed) Google quality update. Among the ranking casualties: are category pages, pages with aggressive advertising, lower-quality/thin content, and other negative user experience elements, according to an analysis by Glenn Gabe, president of GSQi. There was some speculation that Google began testing this algorithm on August 14 because pages that were impacted (either positively or negatively) on this date were further impacted on August 19.

July 9, 2017 - Quality Update

SEO ranking tools detected some minor volatility on July 9, potentially another (unconfirmed) Google quality update.

June 25, 2017- June 25 Update

Various SEO tracking tools detected a significant, though unconfirmed, Google update on this date. One analysis found that this update caused the biggest fluctuations for pages ranking in Positions 6-10. While it impacted most niches, the good and beverage industry was reportedly impacted the most.

May 17, 2017 - Quality Update

Starting May 17 and lasting for about a week, SEO tracking tools reported lots of SERP volatility. While the impact seems limited, those sites impacted by this update tended to have issues with aggressive/deceptive advertising, UX issues, and thin/low-quality content.

March 7, 2017, Fred

Google’s Gary Illyes jokingly referred to this update as “Fred” and the name ended up sticking. But this algorithm was no laughing matter for those impacted. This major algorithm update seemed to mainly target low-value content. On March 24, Illyes officially confirmed the update. But Google has refused to share any more specifics, instead choosing to say that all the answers about Fred can be found in Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines.

February 7, 2017 - February 7 Update

This unconfirmed major update resulted in massive rankings shifts in Google’s SERPs, which also meant major increases or decreases for some websites. Overall, it seems higher-quality and more relevant websites gained the most visibility.

February 1, 2017 - February 1 Update

This was a minor and unconfirmed Google update. Although all information about this update is more speculation than fact, it seemed to target private blog networks or those doing spammy link building.

January 10, 2017 - Intrusive Interstitials Update

On August 23, 2016, Google announced an upcoming change that would target intrusive interstitials and pop-ups that hurt the search experience on mobile devices. As promised, this update rolled out on January 10, 2017. The impact of this update on rankings was minimal.

November 10, 2016 - Unnamed Update

Search industry chatter and data from SEO tracking tools indicated some sort of unconfirmed Google update happened on November 10.

September 23, 2016 - Penguin Update 4.0 & Core Algorithm Integration

The final update to the Penguin algorithm saw it integrated into Google’s core algorithm, meaning Penguin was now evaluating websites and links in real-time. Another big change was that Penguin devalued links, rather than downgrading the rankings of pages.

October 26, 2015 - RankBrain Update

Later in 2015, Google released a tweak to its earlier Hummingbird algorithm.

RankBrain is the machine learning system that Hummingbird uses to understand search intent. Its release added an extra level of personalization to search results by using a user’s search history as well as implied words and context to provide more relevant results to a searcher.

April 21, 2015 - Mobilegeddon Update

In Spring 2015, Google rolled out its next big algorithm update. This time web admins and SEOs were given two months’ notice thanks to an update announced on the Google Webmaster Blog in February 2015.

The Mobilegeddon update, or Mobile-friendly Ranking Factor Update as it is officially known, was so-called because it was Google’s answer to the increase in mobile searches. For the first time, Google started to consider a site’s mobile-friendliness.

September 26, 2013 - Hummingbird Update

Google overhauled search by launching its newest indexing change since Caffeine. This algorithm was coined Hummingbird because it was “quick and precise,” according to Google.

The Hummingbird update affected the way that Google understood search queries. Hummingbird helped Google to decipher search intent so that it could give the user more relevant results

April 24, 2012 - Penguin Update

Google released its next major update, first known as the webspam algorithm update. It was an extension of the Panda update.

It was later renamed the Penguin Update in a tweet from the head of Google’s webspam team, Matt Cutts. But its former name gives a better indication as to what this update was all about.

August 12, 2011 - Panda Update

The previous year’s Caffeine update also had some negative as well as positive impacts. The speed that Caffeine brought to Google’s algorithm paved the way for masses of poor-quality content and content farms. So in August 2011, Google released its next update to tackle the issues.

The Panda update, named after another Googler, Navneet Panda, was rolled out to combat the decrease in search result quality brought about by the Caffeine update.

June 8, 2010 - Caffeine Update

The next big Google update came in June 2010, but it was such a significant change that SEO professionals had months before its release to test it.

The Caffeine update was so named because it was all about recency and speed. It didn’t impact many websites straight away, though, as the update was more of an indexing change than an algorithm change.

April 28, 2010 - May Day Update

The next core Google algorithm update went live. It was completely rolled out by May 3, 2010, which lends to its name.

The May Day update was unannounced, but Google claimed afterward that the update was all about the quality of its search results. It only affected long-tail keywords, particularly impacting big companies.

January 18, 2009 - Vince Update

The effects of the next big update in Google’s algorithm were starting to be seen in search results all over the world.

The Vince update was named after a Google engineer and was announced by Google just weeks earlier. Big brands with offline businesses were the beneficiaries of the Vince update.

March 29, 2006 - Big Daddy Update

The head of Google’s webspam team, Matt Cutts, did something unheard of. He announced the next big Google algorithm update.

Not only did Matt Cutts announce the update was coming, but he also asked SEOs to test it. It was an SEO that named the update Big Daddy, which was then approved and rolled out from January 2006 to March 2006.

September and October 2005 - Jagger Update

Google started to roll out its next big algorithm update and didn’t finish until sometime in October 2005.

The search community informally named the Jagger update because The Rolling Stones were playing in Las Vegas at the time. It primarily impacted newer websites, which led people to believe that Google favored more established sites and more prominent brands.

November 16, 2003 - Florida Update

Google released the very first algorithm update, and it changed search forever.

The Florida update is so-called because of the hurricane-like way that it took search results by storm. It impacted retail sites the most. This included hotels, clothing, jewelry, and businesses ranking for highly commercial terms with significant search volumes. And it hit them right in the middle of the holiday shopping season.

Courtesy -

Image Source - Google / Respective owners

Content Source - Search Engine Journal, SEM Rush, Google