Most modern businesses rely on Google search to gain more visibility and draw traffic to their website. Marketers implement several campaigns optimized for search engines to ensure their clients catch audience attention. These campaigns require an in-depth understanding of how Google Search works.
Until a few years ago, Google worked with marketers and provided information on how upgrades to the search algorithms impacted the website. That is no longer the case, which is why professionals prize rare insights into the process. Here are some new insights revealed in a recent testimony by a Google representative at the United States House Judiciary Committee:
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Seven Updates a Day
Upgrades to the Google search algorithm have always been a big cause for concern in the marketing community. All major upgrades have shaped and transformed the search engine landscape significantly. These immediately make the news and marketers scramble to check website rankings soon after the upgrades are finalized. While these major upgrades make the news, smaller ones go unnoticed and these usually have the biggest impact. According to the Google representative, the search engine conducted 270,000 algorithm experiments in 2017, which amount to 740 per day.
Of these 270,000 experiments, 2,400 changes were implemented. This means the search engine algorithm received an average of seven updates a day. The engine grows and evolves every day to meet the requirements of the users, so marketers can’t just rely on information from big upgrade changes. They have to keep a close eye on campaigns and track unusual activity.
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15% Unique Queries Through RankBrain
RankBrain was originally created to handle unique queries Google has never seen before. While its functionality has expanded considerably over time, the original purpose still remains. Google gets approximately 15% search queries that are totally unique, which means finding the most relevant information on the query requires more than just a keyword. RankBrain’s machine learning ability allows it to determine the intent behind the query before finding the most relevant results.
These unique queries were just presumed to be different versions of existing queries but the Google representative has corrected this misconception. The 15% queries almost always relate to current events or active incidents. This makes optimizing for RankBrain difficult and unnecessary.
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Google Penalties are Based on Legal Reasons
Google needs to rank and index websites for them to be visible on the search engine results page. Google will penalize websites for their content or level of security by removing their ranking or not indexing them at all. The representative revealed that they use legal reasons and consult local court judgments while implementing penalties. While the representative didn’t mention what legal basis they use, one can assume factors like copyright, right to privacy, or illegal content.
Penalties have a permanent impact on a website’s SEO strategies and their page rank. That’s why it’s a good idea to follow Google guidelines carefully.
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