9 Major Google's Algorithm Updates, Penalties and Their Goals

Today we are spreading knowledge about Google Updates which are more important for Digital Marketers - SEO. If you have good knowledge about these updates then you can prevent your website from the Google Penalization.

Introduction
Google rolls out algorithm updates once or twice every month (and that’s just the ones we know
about!), but not all of them have an equally strong impact on the SERPs. To help you make sense
of Google’s major algo changes in the past years, I’ve put up a cheat sheet with the most important
updates and penalties rolled out in the recent years, along with a list of hazards and prevention tips
for each.
But before we start, let’s have a quick look to check whether any given update has impacted your own site’s traffic. There are so many great SEO Tools which will do a massive help in this; the tool will automatically match updates of all major Google updates to your traffic and ranking graphs.

Did any of the updates impact your organic traffic in any way? Read on to find out what each of the

updates were about, what the main hazards are, and how you can keep your site safe.

Google’s 9 Major Algorithm Updates & Penalties:

1. Panda
2. Penguin
3. Pirate
4. Hummingbird
5. Pigeon
6. Mobile Friendly
7. RankBrain
8. Possum
9. Fred

1. Panda

Launching Date: Feb 24, 2011

Rollouts: Real-time

Goal: De-rank sites with low-quality content

Google Panda is an algorithm used to assign a content quality score to web pages and down-rank

sites with low-quality, spammy, or thin content. Initially, Panda was a filter rather than a part of

Google’s core algorithm, but in January 2016, it was officially incorporated into the ranking algo. While

this doesn’t mean that Panda is now applied to search results in real time, it does indicate that both

getting filtered by and recovering from Panda now happens faster than before.

Hazards:

1. Duplicate content
2. Plagiarism
3. Thin content
4. User-generated spam
5. Keyword stuffing
6. Poor user experience

2. Penguin

Launching Date: April 24, 2012

Rollouts: Real-time

Goal: De-rank sites with spammy, manipulative link profiles

Google Penguin aims to identify and down-rank sites with unnatural link profiles, deemed to be

spamming the search results by using manipulative link tactics. Since late 2016, Penguin is part of

Google’s core ranking algo and operates in real time, which means that penalties are now applied

faster, and recovery also takes less time.

Hazards:

1. Links coming from poor quality, “spammy” sites
2. Links coming from sites created purely for SEO link building (PBNs)
3. Links coming from topically irrelevant sites
4. Paid links
5. Links with overly optimized anchor text

3. Pirate

Launching Date: Aug 2012

Rollouts: Oct 2014

Goal: De-rank sites with copyright infringement reports

Google’s Pirate Update was designed to prevent sites that have received numerous copyright

infringement reports from ranking well in Google search. The majority of sites affected are relatively

big and well-known websites that made pirated content (such as movies, music, or books)

available to visitors for free, particularly torrent sites. That said, it still isn’t in Google’s power to

follow through with the numerous new sites with pirated content that emerge literally every day.

Hazards:

1. Pirated content
2. The high volume of copyright infringement reports
3. How to stay safe
4. Don’t distribute anyone’s content without the copyright owner’s permission. Really, that’s it.

4. Hummingbird

Launched: August 22, 2013

Rollouts: -

Goal: Produce more relevant search results by better understanding the meaning

behind queries

Google Hummingbird is a major algorithm change that has to do with interpreting search queries,

(particularly longer, conversational searches) and providing search results that match searcher

intent, rather than individual keywords within the query.

While keywords within the query continue to be important, Hummingbird adds more strength

to the meaning behind the query as a whole. The use of synonyms has also been optimized with

Hummingbird; instead of listing results with the exact keyword match, Google shows more theme-

related results in the SERPs that do not necessarily have the keywords from the query in their content.

Hazards:

1. Exact-match keyword targeting
2. Keyword stuffing

5. Pigeon

Launching Date: July 24, 2014 (US)

Rollouts: December 22, 2014 (UK, Canada, Australia)

Goal: Provide high quality, relevant local search results

Google Pigeon (currently affecting searches in English only) dramatically altered the results Google

returns for queries in which the searcher’s location plays a part. According to Google, Pigeon created

closer ties between the local algorithm and the core algorithm, meaning that the same SEO factors

are now being used to rank local and non-local Google results. This update also uses location and

distance as a key factor in ranking the results.

Pigeon led to a significant (at least 50%) decline in the number of queries local packs are returned

for, gave a ranking boost to local directory sites, and connected Google Web search and Google Map

search in a more cohesive way.

Hazards

1. Poorly optimized pages
2. Improper setup of a Google My Business page
3. NAP inconsistency
4. Lack of citations in local directories (if relevant)

6. Mobile Friendly Update

Launching Date: April 21, 2015

Rollouts: -

Goal: Give mobile-friendly pages a ranking boost in mobile SERPs, and de-rank pages

that aren’t optimized for mobile

Google’s Mobile Friendly Update (aka Mobilegeddon) is meant to ensure that pages optimized for

mobile devices rank at the top of the mobile search, and subsequently, down-rank pages that are not

mobile friendly. Desktop searches have not been affected by the update.

Mobile friendliness is a page-level factor, meaning that one page of your site can be deemed mobile

friendly and up-ranked, while the rest might fail the test.

Hazards:

1. Lack of a mobile version of the page
2. Improper viewport configuration
3. Illegible content
4. Plugin use

7. RankBrain

Launching Date: October 26, 2015 (possibly earlier)

Rollouts: -

Goal: Deliver better search results based on relevance & machine learning

RankBrain is a machine learning system that helps Google better decipher the meaning behind

queries, and serve best-matching search results in response to those queries.

While there is a query processing component in RankBrain, there also is a ranking component to

it (when RankBrain was first announced, Google called it the third most important ranking factor).

Presumably, RankBrain can somehow summarize what a page is about, evaluate the relevancy of

search results, and teach itself to get even better at it with time.

The common understanding is that RankBrain, in part, relies on the traditional SEO factors (links, on-

page optimization, etc.), but also look at other factors that are query-specific. Then, it identifies the

relevance features on the pages in the index and arranges the results respectively in SERPs.

Hazards

1. Lack of query-specific relevance features
2. Poor user experience

8. Possum

Launched: September 1, 2016

Rollouts: -

Goal: Deliver better, more diverse results based on the searcher’s location and the

business’ address

The Possum update is the name for a number of recent changes in Google’s local ranking filter. After

Possum, Google returns more varied results depending on the physical location of the searcher

(the closer you are to a certain business physically, the more likely you’ll see it among local results)

and the phrasing of the query (even close variations now produce different results). Somewhat

paradoxically, Possum also gave a boost to businesses that are outside the physical city area.

(Previously, if your business wasn’t physically located in the city you targeted, it was hardly ever

included into the local pack; now this isn’t the case anymore.) Additionally, businesses that share an

address with another business of a similar kind may now be de-ranked in the search results.

Hazards:

1. Sharing a physical address with a similar business
2. Competitors whose business address is closer to the searcher’s location

9. Fred

Launching Date: March 8, 2017

Rollouts: -

Goal: Filter out low-quality search results whose sole purpose is generating ad and

affiliate revenue

The latest of Google’s confirmed updates, Fred got its name from Google’s Gary Illyes, who jokingly

suggested that all updates be named “Fred”. Google confirmed the update took place, but refused

to discuss the specifics of it, saying simply that the sites that Fred targets are the ones that violate

Google’s webmaster guidelines. However, the studies of affected sites show that the vast majority of

them are content sites (mostly blogs) with low-quality articles on a wide variety of topics that appear

to be created mostly for the purpose of generating ad or affiliate revenue.

Hazards:

1. Low-value, ad-centered content
2. Thin, affiliate-heavy content