All digital marketers and SEO professionals look forward to the yearly changes Google makes to its search algorithm.
While Google announces some upgrades from the rooftops, others are low-key affairs that don’t garner much attention. Yet whether large or small, Google’s changes don’t impact marketers as drastically as they have in the past.
Major Google Search Engine Algorithm Updates 2016
Among the major updates Google rolled out in 2016 were Panda, Penguin and Possum. Needless to say, Google implements all of its modifications with the aim of making it easy for users to find the information they’re looking for in minimal time. Google also has aimed to integrate paid and organic search results with both local and mobile SEO.
Beginning of the year surprises
Some people expected Google’s Penguin update at the very beginning of 2016. Instead, Google updated its core ranking algorithm, which caused some fluctuations in search rankings.
A significant change at the end of February that impacted click-through rates (CTR) was Google’s update to AdWords. Instead of featuring ads on the right-hand side of the screen, Google moved them to the top of the results page. Consequently, no organic results were above the fold on any type of screen, even desktop computers.
Another update at the end of February was when Google added an Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) news carousel to the top of mobile search results. This was a significant step for the company to improve the user-friendliness of the web.
There was an unconfirmed update in the middle of May, and then Google made another mobile-friendly decision a couple of days later. The company decided to make mobile optimization a more influential ranking factor for search results.
Google Possum
At the beginning of September, Google rolled out Possum, an update with a significant impact. The Possum update affects local listings in particular and is designed to make local searches more effective.
There are several ramifications of the Possum update. Possum filters companies using the same address, broadens city limits, and gives more weight to the actual locations of users.
For example, before the update, businesses that were near a city but were right outside the city limits had difficulty ranking in search results. But their results improved noticeably following Possum.
On the other hand, the Possum update also means that if multiple businesses use the same address (e.g., work in the same office complex), all but one of them will be filtered out of the results. In fact, the update is apparently so specific that it can impact your search results even if you’re simply the owner of multiple companies.
In one case, there was a dentist who had two different practices with different addresses, employees, websites, network access points (NAP), and Google accounts. Before, his practices had simultaneously ranked in the 3-pack. But after the Possum update, they only ranked in the 3-pack one at a time and never together.
Another consequence of the Possum update is that there is a lot more variety in the search results depending on the exact keywords you enter. Also, since Possum, the organic filter and the local filter seem to be operating separately.
Google Penguin
An unexpected shakeup happened in September that caused half of the images in the search results to disappear. Not surprisingly, this disappearance significantly impacted organic rankings. Some speculate this incident occurred because of the Penguin update that came shortly afterward, but Google never confirmed that was the case.
Then the long-awaited Penguin 4 update finally arrived. Google has now merged Penguin with its core algorithm, meaning that Penguin will quickly consider website changes because of real-time refreshes.
The update is granular and will only impact spammy pages. One difference, though, is that rather than penalizing sites for spammy pages, Penguin now devalues their links.
The only other noteworthy event from 2016 was a shift in rankings in November. Some believe this to have been caused by Google testing the mobile-first index. Once again, however, this hypothesis is unconfirmed.
Takeaway
This information should be helpful to SEO experts when planning their strategies this year. The intent of Google updates is clear: websites should follow clean SEO practices and create valuable content. The following gifographic encapsulates every prominent Google search algorithm update rolled out in 2016.
Google’s Biggest Search Algorithm Updates Of 2016, a visual representation by E2M.
Saumil Shah
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Great Article !! It will definitely going to help me growing in my business and taking it to one step forward.
Google is one of the most trusted Search Engine.
Thanks for this article.
Google’s new update “Fred” has already shaken the world of internet marketers as it has already penalised many of the websites pointing out black hat SEOs. Now the algorithm is making it hard for them to do their business.
Yo. I’m French, but your post is very good ! Thanks for that. The killer algorithme for me was Penguin…
hey,
Thanks for posting the right informative articles some people wont do such type of articles all are doing spam to their websites but my comment is comes out not from the mouth its came from heart any way thanks a lot i want to gain knowlwedge from your site only so please kindly post as fast as possible.
Awesome !!! Good blog about google update & useful for search engine marketing , SMO, & beginner’s of digital marketing .
I will also update for readers Google also updates Google Adwords its symble “AD” in top most search in dark green & rectangle will show . you try to search any product. find symbole of adword.
I have just released a few websites in quite competitive markets, It’s quite a struggle at the moment as start-up business t generate anything at all through google. In fact It will probably never happen as the companies at the top have multi million pound budgets.
I still see sites on google that arent content worthy which still place well ahead of mine, nor do they have a good backlinking profile.
I guess time will tell, any tips at all would be much appreciated.
Very informative article. Thanks.
All the points mentioned in this article are going to help in the growth of my websites.
Thanks again and keep up the goo work.
Google has always been hard for internet marketers. However, now it’s teaching a good lesson to spammers too :p
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It sounds a new challenge for internet marketers. In every update made by google, we are required to update our tricks.
Agreed. It seems that things are constantly changed. I’m always checking to see how the next update has impacted my site but I guess the aim is to have a site that is good enough to withstand it.
Man, you are so on point every single article you produce! I have noticed the change in Google but didn’t know what was going on, but I did see that when I was in different areas I would run a search on my mobile and my location page would fly up to the top of Google. So I was thinking why is the index page not showing up but the location page is. I scrolled down to bottom, of the search results and the locations were on postcode mode which made sense that page has total relevance to the search term. So based on that theory location pages could be the way forward for SEO.