Google Search Algorithm Update On September 27th

Sep 28, 2018 • 7:54 am

Google Algorithm Update

I am hearing some chatter around a possible Google search algorithm update that took place yesterday, September 27th. To be honest, not all of my indicators, i.e. the community chatter and the tracking tools, are 100% convincing that there was a big update. I do believe that a nice number of sites were impacted yesterday but the impact was not as large as a bigger update.

I had a nice number of people ask me if there was an update yesterday, but again, the overall chatter is not massive. There is chatter and I'll share that chatter below. Some are thinking that maybe there was a reversal to one of the previous and recent Google algorithm updates. So it is hard to say at this point. When you look at the chatter, many are suggesting it may be a reversal or adjustment of some sorts to the Google Medic Update - but time will tell.

Here is some of the chatter at WebmasterWorld:

SEO trends and Google changes to expect in 2018

Columnist Pratik Dholakiya explores current search trends and speculates on where the industry might be headed in 2018.

Pratik Dholakiya on January 11, 2018 at 12:04 pm

We’re already over a week into 2018, and the start of a new year is a great time to check in and see where we stand as an industry — and how things might change this year.

Prepare for fake news algorithm updates

Back in 2010, Google was getting beaten up in the media for the increasing amount of “content farm” clutter in the search results. That negative press was so overwhelming that Google felt it had no choice but to respond:

[We] hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content.

Soon after that, in February 2011, the Google Panda update was released, which specifically targeted spammy and low-quality content.

Why do I bring this up today? Because the media has been hammering Google for promoting fake news for the past year and a half — a problem so extensive that search industry expert Danny Sullivan has referred to it as “Google’s biggest-ever search quality crisis.”

Needless to say, these accusations are hurting Google’s image in ways that cut far deeper than content farms. While the problem of rooting out false information is a difficult one, it is one that Google has a great deal of motivation to solve.

Google has already taken action to combat the issue in response to the negative press, including banning publishers who were promoting fake news ads, testing new ways for users to report offensive autocomplete suggestions, adjusting their algorithm to devalue “non-authoritative information” (such as Holocaust denial sites), and adding “fact check” tags to search results.

Of course, the issue of trustworthy search results has been on Google’s radar for years. In 2015, researchers from Google released a paper on Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT), a way of evaluating the quality of web pages based on their factual accuracy rather than the number of inbound links. If implemented, the Knowledge-Based Trust system would ultimately demote sites that repeatedly publish fake news (although there is a potential for it to go wrong if the incorrect facts become widely circulated).

Whether the Knowledge-Based Trust method is enough to combat fake news — or if some version of it has already been implemented without success — is difficult to say. But, it’s clear that Google is interested in making truthfulness a ranking factor, and they’ve never had a stronger motivation to do so than now.

Voice search and featured snippets will grow hand-in-hand

One in five mobile search queries currently comes from voice search — a number that is likely to rise as Google Assistant-enabled devices such as Google Home continue to grow in popularity. And as voice search grows, we can expect to see an increase in featured snippets, from which Google often sources its voice search results.

Indeed, there is already evidence that this growth is taking place. A study released by Stone Temple Consulting last year confirmed that featured snippets are on the rise, appearing for roughly 30 percent of the 1.4 million queries they tested.

If this trend continues, featured snippets may even begin to rival the top organic listing as the place to be if you want to get noticed. (For more on featured snippets and how to target them, check out Stephan Spencer’s excellent primer on the subject.)

Source:

https://searchengineland.com/