What’s Google Been Up To?

What’s Google Been Up To?

According to Moz, Google changes its search algorithm around 500-600 times each year. Most of the changes made by Google are minor, but as marketers we know that there are major updates from time to time that significantly impact search results.

Hummingbird was one of the major updates of 2013, along with several updates to Panda and Penguin algorithms. The Panda and Penguin algorithms both determined Google search results using PageRank and other factors. Hummingbird introduced an entirely new algorithm to help return the best results possible for Google users as quickly and precisely as possible. Hummingbird looks at PageRank, page quality, and hundreds of other factors to determine how relevant and useful a page is in relation with a Google search.

Where is Google Heading?

Each of Google’s algorithm updates are designed to bring users more relevant results while reducing the number of spammy results. With the constant updates and increased scrutiny from Google, relying on SEO for visibility on Google is becoming more and more dangerous. Guest blogging used to be important to build Google juice; now Google is saying the days of guest blogging are over.

I believe that the changes Google is making indicate that they are trying to push users in the direction of using Google AdWords for guaranteed visibility in their SERPs, moving users away from reliance on SEO.

SEO vs. Paid Search

SEO is less reliable than paid search if you’re the marketer. This doesn’t mean that SEO is irrelevant to your business because SEO is still highly relevant to the users that are searching for your business. Take yourself out of your marketing shoes for a minute: Google isn’t building a search engine for you as a marketer; Google is building a search engine for you as a user. And as a user you want to find the most relevant content to your search, fast. Google has made it clear to marketers that the most important SEO value factor is relevance. Google has also given marketers everything they need to make their SEO strategy effective; they’ve just made it more difficult.

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