Google Algorithms and its impact

Algorithms are mathematical instructions that guides a computer to accomplish the assigned tasks. A lot has been heard about Google Algorithms in terms of Search Engine Optimization and the ranking system. Ever wondered how you obtain a particular link to your query or web pages at the click of a single button? The algorithm has a major role to play here.

When a user searches for a query, these algorithms in turn searches the web pages based on the keywords entered by the user. The web pages are ranked on the basis of high and quality oriented keywords used in the web pages. Once the ranking of the web page is decided, it pops up in the search result. And mind you, these all happens in a fraction of second. Such is the power of algorithms. Google regularly updates these algorithms bringing a slight change in their functioning. However, they also roll out algorithms with a major change. The following are the 3 important Google algorithms which has a great impact on search results:

Google Panda:

It was launched in the year 2011 with an aim to push down the low quality sites. These thin sites were impacting the rankings of high quality & genuine sites. This algorithm was the only possible way to distinguish the high and low quality sites. Google Panda is the quality content filter which has been a threat to the low quality websites. This also prevented a lot of plagiarism and fresh content was more stressed upon by Google Panda.

Google Penguin:

A lot has been talked about rankings and businesses’ are competing to increase their ranks. Black hat techniques are used by websites to get quicker results, without even realizing that their site would be penalized by Google. To teach a lesson to such offenders, Google launched an algorithm named Penguin. It aimed at penalizing the sites that violated the guidelines of Google Webmaster. Google wanted to lower the ranks of excessive Spammers and those sites who were using manipulative techniques to get a higher rank.

Google Hummingbird:

Keyword plays a major role in ranking a website. It is these keywords that decides the fate of a a site. When a user feeds the keyword in the search engine, the algorithm displays the website which is higher in rank. Since keyword stuffing is against the Google norms, the synonym trend started. A lot of synonyms were used in support of the keywords which ultimately conveyed the same meaning. To prevent this, Google rolled out Hummingbird in 2013 which focused on the words and the entire context of the article.

After the launch of these 3 significant algorithms there was a dramatic change in the page ranks of the sites. The sites that were playing with the content and were manipulating the techniques to get a higher rank were immediately pulled down. This was an eye opener to most of the web owners. Unfortunately the damage was already done. There are updates on the versions of these algorithms which one needs to consider and prioritize. If you wish to maintain your page rank, do keep a track on Google Algorithms.