Google Algorithm Updates: A Timeline
Every month, Google rolls out algorithm updates that may affect the SERPs (Search Engine Research Pages). These updates penalize websites for different factors ranging from spammy content to unnatural link building practices. Understanding the biggest updates and their intended consequence will allow you to avoid future penalties.
Google Algorithm Update | Launch | What Does It Do | What Does It Target |
---|---|---|---|
Panda | February 2011 | Un-rank websites with low-quality content. | Poor-quality, spammy, or thin content Duplicate content & plagiarism User-generated spam Keyword stuffing Poor user experience |
Penguin | April 2012 | Un-rank spammy websites with unnatural link-building practices | Poor-quality and spammy links Private Blog Network (PBN) links Irrelevant link building Paid links Over-optimized anchor text |
Pirate | August 2012 | Un-rank websites in violation of copyright law. | Pirated content Large number of copyright infringement reports |
Hummingbird | August 2013 | Focus on topic search rather than keyword search | Exact keyword targeting Keyword stuffing |
Pigeon | July 2014 | Boost high-quality local rankings | Poorly optimized pages Lack of a Google My Business page Inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) No citations in relevant local directories |
Mobile Friendly Update | April 2015 | Boost mobile-optimized SERP rankings | No mobile optimization Wrong viewpoint configuration Unreadable content Use of plugins |
RankBrain | October 2015 | Improve search results based on relevance and machine learning | No query-specific relevance features Bad user experience |
Possum | September 2016 | Improve local search results based on physical location | Duplicate addresses for businesses Competitors business address |
Fred | March 2017 | Un-rank websites (mainly blogs) with low quality content, generating ad and affiliate revenue. | Poor quality, ad-centric content Affiliate heavy content Thin content |
Aside from Google algorithm updates assigning penalties, manual spam actions may arise from a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guideline. Manual actions are carried out by a member of the Google search team. They typically result from unnatural links, thin content, cloaking, using doorway pages, or selling and purchasing links.
Why Hire Us to Fix Your Google Penalty
We won’t just help your website recover, but we will optimize it and teach you how to avoid future Google penalties. Seychelle takes a systematic approach when conducting a Google Penalty Audit and Assessment. We provide a detailed report and a roadmap of prioritized recommendations for your website recovery.
Included in our Google Penalty Audit & Assessment:
- Backlink profile audit — unnatural link evaluation
- Review of Google Webmaster Tools link reports
- Analyze relevancy of individual backlinks
- Duplicate backlink anchor text ratio analysis
- Identification of links that need to be removed
- Identification of links that need to be retained but changed contextually
- On-page Google Guidelines violations (on-page spam review)
- On-page content quality assessment
- Duplicate content and plagiarism audit
- Audit for content to outbound link ratio
Our on-page spam violation check audits the homepage and up to 10 top directory level pages or landing pages, product pages, categories and more.
On-page spam violation may include cloaking, doorway pages, keyword stuffing, hidden text, and hidden links. We usually leave the Google Penalty Recovery Roadmap for our clients to implement, but if you need assistance with the process, you can inquire about out Google Penalty Restoration services to accelerate your recovery.