Google’s Search Algorithm Changes

• Posted by Terri Wise
• in SEO
• on February 15, 2016
• No Comments.

Are Recent Changes Affecting Your Website Ranking?

Trying to stay on top of Google’s search algorithm changes can be overwhelming for sure. Understanding their updates can sometimes feel impossible. Especially when Google doesn’t really let us in on the details like with a recent “core algo update” that happened on January 8th of this year. There are several companies like Moz whom update and provide a Google Algorithm Change History report that you may find helpful… or at least interesting.

Google’s search algorithm changes

Last year, we reported on a mobile search algorithm update nicknamed “Mobilegeddon.” In our May 4, 2015 blog post, “Do You Have A Mobile-Friendly Website?” we explained the algorithm change and provided links to a couple of tools you could use to check your site. If your website is not responsive to mobile devices, you’re probably starting to see a decline in search traffic from mobile devices.

In another recent blog post, “Important Ranking Factors For SEO” we outlined some basic ranking factors to keep in mind when updating your website or adding new posts to your blog. Even though there are potentially 200 ranking factors that Google uses in their algorithm, the basic ranking factors in that article outline some of the more important ones.

Google Hints That New Ranking Factor Is On The Way

In September 2015, we read an article on WordTracker, “Google hints that websites not using structured markup could see their rankings fall.” While there’s been no additional information published since that time (that we’ve read), if Google thinks structured markup is a good idea, then we should probably start implementing it. As the article explains,

Structured data helps Google to understand the type of content presented on a site. The search engine uses this information to determine how, and in what format, the content is indexed on its search results pages. If you’ve ever done a search for an airline ticket from a specific airport, and gotten a list of all flights landing from a certain destination at a certain terminal, this is one example of structured data markup in action.

WCMS has been adding structured markup to our own web pages recently as well as to our customers’ websites. We plan to write an article in the next few weeks explaining what structured data and rich snippets are, why they’re important and how you’ll benefit from structured markup.