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Ten recent algorithm changes

Author's avatar By Chris Soames 17 Nov, 2011
Essential Essential topic

And the 3 you need to action

Value/Importance: [rating=4]

Recommended link: Official Google Post from Matt Cutts

Our commentary

With the sheer volume of search engine algorithm updates that take place on Google alone its difficult to keep a track on amends you need to make to your tactics / strategy. This recent post from Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) highlights 10 of the more significant changes Google has made recently, well worth you taking the time to ready through them! The top 3 most actionable / useful for me are:

This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.

Extending application rich snippets: We recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.

Fresher, more recent results: As we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.

There is nothing massively game changing in this recent update from Google but these large numbers of small updates can soon impact your reach so be sure to keep on top of them!

Author's avatar

By Chris Soames

Chris Soames is a Smart Insights blogger and consultant, he has worked in digital marketing for over 6 years with the last few years managing international web strategies for a leading travel brand. Now the Commercial Director at First 10, an Integrated marketing agency, he helps clients get clarity on their marketing strategy and create campaigns engineered to engage with their consumers to help drive sell-through. Most of all, Chris enjoys working with talented people who want to create great (& commercial) things not just tick boxes.

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