There are many active Web sites on the Internet today. The task of sifting through all those sites to find helpful information is massive. That's why search engines use mathematical calculations to get exact searched results.

These mathematical instructions that tell computers how to complete assigned tasks and look for clues to give us back exactly what we are searching for are known as Algorithms.

Google's Algorithm does the work for us by searching out Web pages that contain the keywords we are searching, then assigning a rank to each page based on several factors. Higher ranked pages appear further up in Google's search engine results page (SERP).

So far, their are many algorithms launched by Google including Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird etc that influence search ranking. Lets learn how these algorithms work and how we can optimize your website so that when these algorithms are updated, we would know how to safeguard our site from being penalized.

GOOGLE PANDA Released in 2011 and still active to the day, Google

Panda was created to lower the rank of “ low- quality “ sites and return higher quality site near the top of the search results.

Google Panda takes the quality of a site’s content into account when ranking sites in the search results. As a result, this causes higher quality content website to rank higher in the search results while low-quality content websites drops.

Create high-quality, unique content that answers the question searchers are asking in order to prevent Google Panda from negatively impacting your site.

It is important to note that Panda does not target user-generated content.

HOW TO JUDGE HIGH QUALITY CONTENT?

Are You Using the Appropriate Length of Content?

Are You Using Proper Grammar and Spelling, and is Your Content Coherent?

Are You Using Proper Page and Text Formatting?

Are You Achieving An Appropriate Readability Score?

Does the Content Provide Value?

Till Today, Google has released 25 updates for Panda alone.

GOOGLE PENGUIN After identifying and penalizing the websites that

had poor content, it was time for Google to focus on correct SEO practices.

In 2012, the search giant rolled out Google Penguin to regulate websites that were considered spammy or overly-optimized. 

Penguin deals solely with link quality and nothing else. Sites that have purchased links or have acquired low-quality links through places such as low-quality directories, blog spam, or link badges and infographics could find their sites no longer ranking for search terms.

The Penguin targeted sites that manifested keyword stuffing as well as those that practice black-hat SEO. On the other hand, this algorithm rewarded the sites that use white-hat SEO and that are of high quality in a generic sense.

Penguin only deals with a site’s incoming links. Google only looks at the links pointing to the site in question and does not look at the outgoing links at all from that site.

If you suspect your site has been negatively impacted by Penguin, you need to do a link audit and remove or disavow the low quality or spammy links.

How to Evaluate Link quality? There are so many factors that effects the quality of

link like Domain authority, Page authority, Context, Anchor text, etc.

Things to implement to avoid a Penguin penalty Remove/edit anchor text optimized backlinks. Keep it natural. Make sure links pointing out are relevant to your domain

or at least to the article.

GOOGLE HUMMINGBIRD Hummingbird is a part of Google search algorithm

and was the first major change to their algorithm since 2001. Hummingbird is not specifically a spam targeting algorithm, but instead an algorithm to ensure they are serving the best results for specific queries. Hummingbird is more about being able to understand search queries better, particularly with the rise of conversational search. Hummingbird is more about being able to understand search queries better, particularly with the rise of conversational search.

It is believed that Hummingbird is positively impacting the types of sites that are providing high-quality content that reads well to the searcher and is providing answers to the question the searcher is asking, whether it is implied or not.

GOOGLE MOBILE FRIENDLY UPDATE

Released on April 21, 2015, Google Mobile Friendly Update was designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results.

this algorithm includes ways to improve the mobile-friendliness of your pages.

One of the best ways to prepare is to test that Google considers your web pages to be mobile-friendly by using its Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

GOOGLE PIGEON UPDATE Google Pigeon is the code name given to one

of Google's local search algorithm updates. This update was released on July 24, 2014. The update is aimed to increase the ranking of local listing in a search.

The purpose of Pigeon is to provide preference to local search results. This is quite useful for the user and local businesses. Some complained about the ranking being decreased whereas others reported improvement in the search rankings.[3]As per the webmaster's understanding, this update has location and distance as key part of the search strategy. The local directory listings are getting preferences in web results.

GOOGLE PAYDAY UPDATE Launched on June 11, 2013 – the “Payday Update”

was a new algorithm targeted at cleaning up search results for traditionally “spammy queries” .

GOOGLE PIRATE UPDATE The Pirate update was announced in 2012 as a

new signal in Google’s rankings algorithm designed to prevent sites from many copyright infringement reports, as filed through Google’s DMCA (The Digital Millennium Copyright Act)system, from ranking well in Google’s listings. The filter is periodically updated.

GOOGLE EMD UPDATE The EMD(Exact Match Domain) Update — for

“Exact Match Domain” — is a filter Google launched in September 2012 to prevent poor quality sites from ranking well simply because they had words that match search terms in their domain names.

GOOGLE TOP HEAVY UPDATE Google launched Top Heavy was  in January 2012 to

prevent sites that were “top heavy” with ads from ranking well in its listings. Top Heavy is periodically updated. When a fresh Top Heavy Update happens, sites that have removed excessive ads may regain lost rankings. New sites deemed too “top heavy” may get caught.

THANK YOU!