Well, in case you keep up with Internet marketing, or you even just regularly look on the web for information, you have perhaps heard of Google algorithms. But have you ever speculated what these are, exactly?
A Complicated System
Google search algorithm is a complicated system that enables Google to find, rank, and even return the most pertinent pages for a certain search query. To be exact, the entire ranking system is made up of manifold algorithms that contemplate on different factors like relevance, quality, or usability of the page.
In general, in the language of computers, an algorithm makes provisions for the computer to carry out a very specific task. For instance, the computer could be programmed to randomly come up with a specific number between 1 and 100. This is a job that has a set beginning point and endpoint. Thus, it is finite.
To be specific of Google algorithms, these follow the same basic definition and rule of an algorithm that you just read above. Just ponder about the last time you searched for a thing on Google. No matter you typed “cute dog videos” or “shoe stores in New York,” the search engine gets you millions of results in a return to choose from.
The point is how does it decide which results to bring to you, and in which order? It is an algorithm. Google has a complex algorithm for serving search results, and it alters it relatively frequently. And though the company does not make the specific algorithm public, below are a couple of elements that you can know for a fact influence a page’s ability to look in the results for specific keywords:
· The appearance of the keyword in the title of the page, header tags, and meta description
· The sum of naturally occurring, organic links to the page
· How the website works on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets
Google algorithm takes into consideration only these few characteristics when it makes a choice about how to deliver and rank the website pages. There can be many hundreds and even more.
Since the Google algorithm reads a webpage, it assigns a pre-ordained numerical value to each trait it is seeking on the page. It is the numerical value that is then added to the result. Hence, the web page that possesses the most desirable traits is going to rise to the top of the webpage rankings because the algorithm allocates it more importance.
A Quick Walkthrough Google’s 2020 Core Update
On May 4th, to be very specific, Google began to roll out the main update to its algorithm. It is called a “core” update because it is a massive change to their algorithm and hence, it means it impacts a lot of websites.
In case you already have not, you should go and check your rankings to find out if they have gone up or down. In case you are not tracking your rankings, you must do it now. You must sign in to your Google Analytics account and check to find out what’s happening to your traffic. With a bit of luck, your traffic has gone up. If it has not, you should not panic. You can manage things once you know what exactly update can do.
So what industries are affected?
Most of the industries have seen a change however, travel, real estate, pets & animals, health, and people & society witnessed the biggest fluctuations with rankings. Certainly, other industries also got affected however, some industries got affected in the least manner like sports, news, and so on. There was also a shakeup in the realm of local SEO results, but it was something that began before the core update.
Though past core updates have seemed to concentrated heavily on trust and guarding the security of searchers, it appears that the main advancement Google made with the May 2020 core update is specifically in understanding what it is the searcher is searching for and getting them the helpful results. In simple words, Google got better at defining relevance.
What do you Mean by Relevancy?
To understand the alterations that might have happened with Google algorithms, it is important to know what Google means when they tell that core updates help them to present the utmost relevant results.
Google has some interesting documents to clarify how search works. They break the search down into different steps. The first step is to understand the “meaning of the query” and the second is to understand the “relevance of websites.”
Meaning of your query
To get relevant results for your query, you first need to establish what information you are searching for and in other words, the intent behind your query. Understanding intent is basically about understanding language and is a crucial aspect of Search.
Google tries to determine if your query is seeking out fresh content or you are searching for reviews, pictures, or different other types of particular information.
The point is, understanding a user’s query is hard. If a user searches for “best clothes”, it is probably challenging for Google to understand whether you are looking for a website that sells clothes, an article that discusses what to look for in top clothes, or content that talks about the best clothing brands in 2020.
It seems that Google is using BERT to get better at understanding what is the intent behind the query of a user is. When Google proclaimed that they were using BERT, it was in a document known as, “Understanding searches better than ever before.”
To Sum Up
It seems that the May 2020 core update did not address link quality, but rather, it made it so that links were a less crucial ranking aspect than they used to be. With this update, Google has become better at determining what it is that a search was searching for, and also which type of area is the most pertinent for them.
