Understanding Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird Update

A search engine works on simple algorithms that are based on simple methods. People often search for answer to their queries and their needs of the search engine. Search engines perform two functions: crawling and building an index, and providing a list of well-ranked website that are most relevant. Relevancy of the search engine means more than finding a page with the right keywords. Today, due to the vast development in the digital world hundreds of factors, influence the relevancy of the search result. There are hundreds and thousands of sites, which gives an insight related to the query. So, itneed to accomplish these three important goals:

· Disqualify all the sites that aren’t relevant.

· Return a list of sites that are relevant.

· Ranking and prioritization of those sites in order of importance, to identify which sites are relevant one.

However, no single factor is sufficient to provide the answer to the above insights. As mentioned search engines uses complex algorithms that consist of number of factors. Exact formula is still not known, but range of topics is considered that include:

· Link authority: It consists of number of incoming links, quality of the sites, and anchored texts.

· On page factors: It includes title tags, responsive mobile design, and page loading speed.

· Brand metrics: Search volume for the brands, brands mention, and citation of brand name in connection with specific words.

· Content: Frequency of new content uploaded, quality content reads and shares on social media.

It’s important to know that changes occur occasionally in Google’s algorithm. To be updated with the recent changes will help the site owner to stand out top in the search engine. Implementing and developing the change strategies will lead to a long term rankings for the website.

Google has launched recent updates that require general understanding of search engine algorithms and how they operate.

Google’s Recent Key Updates

Google has implemented a number of changes that have made site owners little bit cumbersome about the performance of their site. Three key areas are focused mainly by the updates of Google: content and usability, the quality of links, and the importance of mobile and how we search. Let’s have a look at the recent updates and what you need to know to be at the speed and the top of the search engine.

Google Panda

“Google Panda is a change to Google’s search result and ranking algorithm that was released in February 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of “low-quality” sites or “thin sites”, and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.”

The name “Panda” has come from Google engineer Navneet Panda, who developed the technology and made it possible for the Google to create and implement the algorithm. Google Panda acts as a filter that prevents the low ranking sites and pages from ranking well in the search results. Panda laid stress on content discussion, focusing on the elimination of the low-quality contents, sites with too much advertising and poor navigation, when commercial gains were clearly prioritized over user experience. The onset of Panda has increased the importance of content marketing to focus more on blogging, on-site content, building off-site content assets through guests blogging and social media participation.

Google Panda is now a part of its core ranking algorithm. Jennifer Slegg who received direct quotes from Google itself confirmed that Panda itself is a part of first updated this news

“Panda is an algorithm that’s applied to sites overall and has become one of our core ranking signals. It measures the quality of a site, which you can read more about in our guidelines. Panda allows Google to take quality into account and adjust ranking accordingly.”

In July 2012, Google provided a series of questions that were useful for the webmasters to evaluate whether their site were in parallel to the search engine quality guidelines. The questions that were included were:

· Will you trust the information presented in this article?

· Does this article have loopholes with spelling, stylistic or factual errors?

· Is this article written by an expert who knows the topic well?

· Does the site have redundant article, duplicate content and overlapping the similar topics with slightly different keyword?

· Does the site provide original information that is genuine, original research, original content information and original analysis?

· The level of quality of the content available on the website.

· Does the article describe the pros and cons of the story?

· Is the website a recognized authority on the topic?

· Was the article edited well or not?

· Are the page produced with attention and great care has been taken to detail vs the less details regarding the information?

· Is there an excessive amount of ads that distract the users from reading the information on the site?

· Would you like to bookmark the page, share with a friend or recommend?

· Does the article provide a complete and comprehensive description of the topic?

· Are the article just given a short hand, without describing specific matters of information?

· Is this site trusted in the matters of health?

· Are the topics written by the genuine interest of the readers?

· Would be fearless in giving the credit card information to this site?

The quality of content matters more than ever for Google Panda and it was initially developed to remove poor quality content from Google’s search engine. Now, as it is a part of the core algorithm, quality is now of paramount importance.

Google Penguin

The Google Penguin update is targeting more on the sites, which are in the categories of Web spam. It was launched due to search engine’s response to so-called “black hat” SEO tactics for Link building, released in April 2012. Manipulative link building tactics were targeted that included buying links, trading links, commenting spam links, and building thin sites for the purpose of linking back to a main site.

Here’s the official announcement of the Google Penguin update:

“In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at web spam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted web spam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”

“Google Penguin refers to a set of algorithm updates and data refreshes for the Google search engine that the company periodically initiates to help enhance the value of its search query results for users.”

The Google Penguin now directs site owner to take a much harsher view on link building. A new website owner would like to know and own its site link profile for the first time during SEO tactics. The quality of link, source and content of links ultimately falls to the site owner. If false practices are detected by the Google Penguin than the site owners may be required to audit and rebuild the entire link profile rework to remove the poor quality links. Keep in mind these three questions while link building:

· Is this a high-quality site?

· Is it relevant to the topics?

· How the site’s link profile look like?

· Will they use diverse anchor text to point to your site?

The Google released the first Penguin update in April 2012. It was estimated that it affected 3%of the English-language web sites. There have been at least five Penguin updates in which a major update was Penguin 2.0, in May 2013 and the most recent one Penguin 2.1 later that year in October.

Hummingbird

“Google Hummingbird is a search algorithm used by Google. Google started using Hummingbird about August 30, 2013, and announced the change on September 26 on the eve of the company’s 15th anniversary. GianlucaFiorelli said Hummingbird is about synonyms, but also about context.”

The Humming bird is more concerned about each word in a query that ensures that whole query, the whole sentence or conversation or meaning is taken into account rather than a particular group of words. Hummingbird reinforced into the whole thing that had been done through Google Panda and Penguin and added two specifications. It introduced the importance of mobile devices in search.

The site without mobile responsive designs has no existence, so humming bird introduced the importance of mobile responsive design to the site owners. After the launch of Hummingbird there were lots of arguments. Many of them oppose this because according to them mobile responsive design because readers may access the content from variety of devices including smartphones and tablets that can lead to a creation of your content with a mobile-first mindset.

The second important component of Hummingbird was the introduction of contextual search. Before, Hummingbird search engines used to search the typically interpreted queries with what it recognized as keywords.However, after the introduction of Hummingbird Google look at the relationship between terms to interpret context.

The evolution of Hummingbird is seen as a natural evolution both of Google’s development and the proliferation of mobile devices. An incredibly rich and sophisticated knowledge graph developed after being in business for 15 years by Google has created revolution because more and more users search on mobile devices. Searches are evolving from short keyword driven enquiry to the way we speak and ask questions. Hummingbird is structuring in the way to ensure that Google is poised to understand and meet the demand of the users.

Some of the best practice for Hummingbird SEO:

· Diversify the length of your content.

· Try to produce visual content.

· Use topic-appropriate language.

· Implement Schema microdata.

Conclusion-The recent updates by the Google is a clear indication of the diverse technological advancement. There is more to do with the quality contents and mobile presence. As, an evolution it is expected that future updates will just refine these theories. For example According to the experts future Penguin link related update will target the blogging.

There are several strategies that will be implemented to make a revolution in the updates so that the digital world can be in the hands of the common man also.