GOOGLE UPDATED ITS ALGORITHM AGAIN – WHY DO I CARE?

Many of us have heard about Google updating, but may not be sure what that means or if it even affects you or your business.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, it certainly does and it pays to be ahead of the curve on their updates.

You can generally predict where Google may be going next by taking a look at the history of updates to date. So, let’s take a look at a quick history of updates and why they matter.

HISTORY OF GOOGLE UPDATES

Google has been updating its algorithm under minor revisions since December 2000 and naming their major revision updates as of February 2003, with the release of the Boston update. Initially, attempting to update on a monthly basis, Google had named updates almost every month in 2003. These updates took care of most of the ‘bad’ websites, i.e. those with too many links to other places, ‘fake’ websites. Once 2004 rolled around, there were only two updates at the beginning of the year targeting the meta-tag stuffers. In 2005, there were a whole host of changes like XML sitemaps and the nofollow tag/rule affecting more and more ‘bad sites.’ From 2006 – 2012, there were multiple updates to the look, feel, indexing, toolbar and many other items within Google aimed at making the user experience better and showing truly relevant search results. While we could delineate every single update and its impact, this is just a brief synopsis of the many Google updates since they began in order to shed light on the importance of paying attention to the changes they make. Every change, however small, affects your website ranking on the largest search network in the world – Google.

WHY DO I CARE?

The latest update affects sites that are not properly formatted or ‘marked up’. Google released a minor update that matters to older sites who have not kept up with the latest and greatest in web design. If your website was built in 2010-2014 without regular updates, it may be time for a change.

Google released a special markup language for tagging your site for mobile called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are web pages designed according to an open source specification. Validated AMP pages are cached in Google’s AMP cache, which allows them to be served even more quickly.

The AMP format is supported by a wide variety of platforms, including Google Search. If a web page listed in Google’s search results has a valid AMP version, Search may direct mobile users to the cached AMP. Google is constantly updating, even now introducing hardware, as can be seen by the #madebygoogle video.

It doesn’t matter if you are in Illinois, New York, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Wisconsin, Utah, California or anywhere… Google’s updates affect your business!

You may be asking yourself, what do I do now? Call Persist today to learn more about our consulting services and how we can guide you in the right direction. Contact us online at forPersist.com or call (866) 473-7747 today. Don’t let your company be buried in Google’s algorithm!