It goes without saying that Google is the king in the search engine arena. Studies show that more than three billion searches are made every day on Google by people all around the world. You might not be surprised as this is the company that holds more than 80% of the desktop search engine market share.
No doubt, Google is popular and famous. So, marketers who are looking to perform and do well in organic search and digital marketing services should really know what factors or aspects Google follows while ranking content. It isn’t rocket science. Every tech company will be having some search algorithm or strategy to be the top and best.
A common misconception that people have is that they can know how Google’s ranking algorithm works. With the extensive efforts that businesses and brands put in optimizing content, they feel that it is easy to find out the tactic behind Google’s search algorithm. However, it isn’t that easy, as Google has never ever publicly listed the various factors that it takes into account while ranking content.
Parameters Of Google Update
As clearly stated that Google never publicizes the technique that it implements in its search algorithm, but it has definitely defined the yardstick that it follows. It is about 200 and some of the major ones are the following –
- Site-Level Factors
- Domain Factors
- Algorithm Rules
- Backlink Factors
- Page-Level Factors
- Brand Signals
- User Interaction
- Webspam Factors
Changes & Impact Google Has Made Over The Years
Over the past few years, Google has made significant modifications to its search algorithm. These changes or you can say updates create a dramatic impact on the search engine optimization tactics. Understanding these changes are quite necessary especially for small businesses who are trying hard to show up in the local search engine results and gaining new customers.
Various studies have shown that search engine is commonly used and most helpful channel when it concerns finding details about local businesses. For getting selected as well as found, it is necessary for online businesses to have a deep understanding of how Google finds out the ranking and create strategies which might respond to these factors related to high ranking.
Updates From Google You Might Have Missed
For the past few weeks, there has been a lot of noise related to the possible updates that occurred in the Google algorithm. Of course, these updates are very much substantial, still, a small or evolving business (even an established business) should keep in mind that Google always updates its search algorithm every single day, and sometimes multiple times each day.
Still, no doubt whatever updates have occurred in the recent months, it is still substantial and the daily updates which occur don’t compare to any manner to this in any form. This is something that you must have to keep in mind with regard to the entire search results and also if you have the best results for the user query.
However, there are things you might want to do for improving your ranking like on-site search engine optimization techniques, getting optimized for answer boxes (i.e. rank zero), link building to your website, etc. Besides all these factors and the digital marketing services you follow, you must also keep in mind what Google is thinking about. If the website design of your business needs to be reworked, the user experience isn’t that much great and your competitors are providing better value, then these could be the core problems, not the Google updates or algorithm changes.
The following are the updates you really need to know –
- End Of Google PlusIf you are a small business who is using Google Plus on a large scale, then you very well know that the end of Google Plus is somewhat near. Even though the consumer side of Google Plus will shut down immediately in April 2019, however, the company has begun to implement modifications starting from 4th Feb 2019.This shutdown comes months before the date of August 2019 which Google has specified in 2018. Frankly, this date was specified as a Google+ AP bug had affected 52.5 million Google Plus users.“With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shut-down of all Google+ APIs; this will occur within the next 90 days. In addition, we have also decided to accelerate the sunsetting of consumer Google+ from August 2019 to April 2019.” – David Thacker, Vice President of Product Management for G SuiteBut this doesn’t mean that it is the end of small business users’ Google Plus usage. Google will be releasing a new version of the Google Plus Android app by the end of this month. This allows G Suite Android users to use Google Plus on their mobile phones and devices.
- Newsgate Algorithm UpdatesA month back, it was announced that Google had introduced a new update in its algorithm, which happens to be the latest update for 2019. This algorithm impacted on new websites and blogs belonging to various different niches, and people started calling it as ‘Newsgate Algorithm Update’.As per this update, Google has specified certain rules for news publishers which imparted them to stay away from publishing rewritten content. Here are two major rules –
- Scraped content will be blocked: Google will block scraped content from Google News. Here scraped content means material taken from another site or resource.
- Rewritten content will be deleted: Content taken from another site and spun or rewritten, making it different from the original won’t be published in Google News. It even includes articles that are written with slight changes or terms replaced, even though the article’s overall meaning is the same as the original one.The best way is to handle this Newsgate Algorithm is by having –
- Accurate & time-using structure data
- Clear & descriptive titles
- Using HTTPS for all pages and posts
- Avoiding all kinds of rewritten, duplicate and even scrapped content
Final Thoughts
Most businesses are aware that their content marketing strategy must keep a close watch on what Google is up to. Also, analyzing what you must do to keep your website ranking. Furthermore, even if you are doing everything right and following the correct digital marketing services, still there is a fear in the mind of marketers that their hard work can easily be undone within seconds when Google releases a new algorithm. Even during one study, it was found that B2B defined search engine algorithm as the number one content marketing issues which they are worried about every year.
