Introduction To Major Google Search Algorithms

Google uses multiple search algorithms to display search results for a specific query. When a user starts typing a query in search bar, the results based upon those algorithms start appearing. Every webpage on internet is examined by many Google algorithms so after analyzing each and every page carefully, giant search engines decides which are to be appeared first in first of search results for a specific query. A primary user has nothing to deal with those algorithms because he needs only results. No matter from where he gets, if he doesn't find results from a web-page, he sees next until he finds what he is looking for. This is the attitude of a normal person. But webmasters have different considerations for these search algorithms. The reason is, every webmaster is consuming his energies in search engine optimization to come in top results of search engine. For this, they need to know how their web-sites are examined and analyzed by crawlers to index them search rankings.

Google is most popular search engine as we can see that it is top visited website in whole world so beside other search engines, webmasters keep struggling to get top rankings in search results. That's why, webmasters try to implement those SEO techniques on their websites which Google team love and want to see on internet. So they introduced search algorithms to analyze multiple factors of a web-page which determine quality of content. The purpose of Google by introducing these algorithms is to bring high quality and original content in top of search results helping users and webmasters too. Google has set some webmaster guidelines which are to be followed in order to get indexed originally. These algorithms strictly monitor if a site is following those guidelines or not so the rankings are decided by them.

A blogger must have know-how of these algorithms so he does not get involved in forbidden SEO techniques which lead to penalization of a site. In this article, I am going to give an introduction to some major search algorithms by Google. The algorithms which I am introducing here are those having massive impact on search results. Lets proceed.

1. Google Panda:

According to my consideration, this algorithm is named as Panda due to the similarity in behavior of Giant Panda and this algorithm. As Giant Panda loves to eat bamboo plants which consists of thin sticks, similar to it Google Panda eats thin pages on the web. Thin pages refer to low quality content or content with no or un-noticeable text. Google Panda was first released in February 2011 and has effected 12% search results.

Google Panda is very strict algorithm which penalizes sites which violate ethical webmaster guidelines for example copyright infringements, low quality, plagiarized material, thin content etc. Mostly whole site is effected by Panda penalty due to only few pages in a site. Lets make it clear.

Suppose you run a genuine blog with great quality content which deserves to be in top of search rankings. Unknowingly, you make some posts which were of very low quality and nearly no content in them. Panda penalizes those web-pages which effect decrease in rankings of whole blog.

That is why you must not compromise on originality and quality of your content. Google's Mat Cutt recommends removal, blocking of pages to be indexed by search engines using robots.txt file or rewriting of pages having low quality content to gain back the rankings. Rewriting doesn't mean to re-publish the old content but make the modifications to enhance its quality. It is the way recover from Panda Penalty.

Google has rolled out many updates of Panda. Latest update of Google Panda (till the date) was rolled out on 27th September 2014.

2. Page Layout Algorithm (Ads Above The Fold):

Page layout refers to the placement of visual elements on a page. Visitors don't want to see ads first on the page instead of the content which they were searching on search engines. Placing too many ads above the visual fold so that original content becomes invisible on first impression triggers this algorithm to effect the site rankings. Its purpose is to provide quality content a boost while degrading those webmasters whose sites are just bucket of ads. To avoid being penalized by Google, make it sure not to place too many ads above the content so that user will see content easily which they search for.

3. Google Penguin:

Black-Hat SEO refers to false techniques used to get quick index rankings for the sites which don't deserve to be indexed higher while white-hat SEO techniques are those which are recommended SEO practices. Black-Hat SEO techniques are used to artificially increase the rankings of a webpage by manipulating the bakclinking system. The common blackhat methods are keyword stuffing, backlinking spam, paid backlinks, buying traffic, link exchange etc. These are the practices forbidden by Google in their guidelines for webmasters. The purpose of Google Penguin is to detect web-spam and bring those site owners up who are working genuinely to ensure quality. Google Penguin penalizes the sites which are involved in webspam. This algorithm is expert in detecting unnatural backlinks, punishing keyword stuffed content which has no value for a real visitor. There are examples of those sites which didn't have any content in them but were appearing first in search results for specific queries. This was due to the webspam techniques used by the site owner.

An example was http://www.something.com which contains only a word "Something" in it but was appearing first in search results a long ago before the release of Panda and Penguin. Penguin was first released in April 2012 and it has been updated for five times till today. According to Google estimated data Penguin has effected 3.1% of total search rankings.

Recovering your penguin penalized site is sometimes automatic. Effective use of White-hat techniques, removing backlinks from suspicious sources and adopting a genuine backlink strategy can also be helpful.

4. Google Humming Bird:

Google Humming Bird is Google algorithm which focus on keywords of the query and understands the meanings of whole sentence in a query rather than a single Keyword. It was released on August 2013 and was most popular update after Google Caffeine which was released to improve search results. Its purpose is to improve search results by understanding the search queries so the user gets what he is actually looking for.

For example you type a query in Google search results "report adsense violation", this will display reporting page of Adsense violation instead of other articles in search results.

The purpose of Humming Bird is to make Google intelligently fetching the results.

5. Pagerank:

Pagerank is another important Google algorithm which was named after the founder of Google, Lary Page. It decides importance of a domain by analyzing the inbound links pointing towards the specific domain. It was first updated on 28th April 2007.

Pagerank algorithm has a scale from 0 to 10 assigning 10 to the most important domain while 0 to least important. The domain analysis for calculating its importance is done by many factors which include the authority of the webpage where the backlink is present, relation of backlink page from original domain etc.

Usually, new webmasters are advised to adopt SEO techniques for increasing Pagerank so they automatically appears well in search results. However Google's current behavior doesn't show that there is need to keep struggling to gain Pagerank. Instead of it, Google's focus is to increase quality of the content published on internet.

Pagerank had been updating punctually after consecutive quarters each year since February 2013. After which the next update was rolled out in December 2013 after 8 months wait and now almost 10 months have passed since the last update and there are no signs of any future update.

So introduction to these popular Google algorithms ends here. These five are most popular algorithms which work behind the search results. Beside them, 200+ algorithms are also working to maintain quality which shows how Google is trying to give quality content a boost.

Final Words:

So in the light of the above paragraphs, I advise new webmasters to take care of quality and applying white-hat SEO techniques to become a successful blogger. Follow the webmaster guidelines set by Google and avoid any black-hat or false techniques to manipulate your site rankings.
That's IT.