Last month, Google first posted a list of the latest 10 updates to their search algorithm. Nothing too specific of course, but certainly a list of things that would be looked at differently in future. Most of them dealt with language and translation tweaks, but there were a few that were changes in how site rankings were determined.
Now it seems that there are going to be monthly updates on changes to Google, which should give the SEO’s something to worry about regularly. You can check out the official announcement on Googles Official Search Blog or you can just read on for a summary of what they have to say.
With Google making over 500 changes a year to their algorithm, these monthly updates are going to be interesting to get I think.
Latest Google Updates
These are the latest relevant updates:
Improved Related Results
Sometimes, Google will deliver a result that is related to your query, but doesn’t quite match it. This change improves the relevance of those results, based on any unusual word in your query that would produce less relevant results if it was left out of the alternative query.
Improved Indexing
Google will be increasing the number of pages they index for long tail keywords, which will make them more likely to rank as relevant to a query that uses them.
Parked Domains Excluded
Another change will be an improvement to the algorithm that automatically detects parked domains, and excludes them from results, because parked domains are rarely relevant, and frequently covered in ads.
More Autocomplete Options
Google says they’ve improved the options for autocomplete in the search box. Lets see how they do on that…
Improved Blog Search Results
Search has been tweaked to provide better, fresher and more comprehensive results from blogs.
Original Content
Another change they’ve apparently just made is an improvement to the detection of original pages. They say that they’ll now be better able to determine which is the original page, when faced with two very similar pages.
Code Rewrite For Top Selections
Google has rewritten the code that deals with the top set of results, in order to prevent too many results from the same site from being shown.
Other Changes
There were a couple of other small changes too, but they’re not ones which will impact SEO. These include live results for more sports events, image freshness improvements, and better tablet layouts. Read the original blog post for more information.