Google Algorithm Names and Algo Updates

·         Panda is to fight against Low quality content and Penguin is to fight against Web Spam.

2012 UpdatesJanuary 30-Pack - January 5, 2012

Updates including image search landing-page quality detection, more relevant site-links, more rich snippets, and related-query improvements.

2011 Updates

Overstock.com Penalty - January 2011

In a rare turn of events, a public outing of shady SEO practices by Overstock.com resulted in a very public Google penalty. JCPenney was hit with a penalty in February for similar bad behavior. Both situations represented a shift in Google's attitude and foreshadowed the Panda update.

Attribution Update - January 28, 2011

In response to high-profile spam cases, Google rolled out an update to help better sort out content attribution and stop scrapers. According to Matt Cutts, this affected about 2% of queries. It was a clear precursor to the Panda updates.

Panda/Farmer Update - February 23, 2011

Google Panda was a major algorithm update hit sites hard which seemed to crack down on thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-to-content and a number of other quality issues.

 +1 Button - March 30, 2011

Responding to competition by major social sites, including Facebook and Twitter, Google launched the +1 button directly next to results links. Clicking [+1] allowed users to influence search results within their social circle, across both organic and paid results.

Google Panda 2.0 - April 11, 2011

Google rolled out the Panda update to all English queries worldwide.

Google Panda 2.1 - May 9, 2011

Google appeared to roll out yet another round of minor changes.

Schema.org - June 2, 2011

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced support for a structured data by creating new schemas for richer search results.

Google Panda 2.2 - June 21, 2011

Google Panda 2.2 continued to update Panda-impacted sites and data.

Google+ - June 28, 2011

Google+ was launched for a number of social media failures like Facebook with Google+ around circles for sharing content and was integrated into Gmail and within 2 weeks Google+ reached 10M users.

Google Panda 2.3 - July 23, 2011

It was a simply an update to the Panda data and ranking factors.

Panda Goes Global 2.4 - August 12, 2011

Google launched Panda internationally, both for English-language queries globally and non-English queries except for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Expanded Sitelinks - August 16, 2011

After experimenting for a while, Google officially rolled out expanded site-links, most often for brand queries.

Pagination Elements - September 15, 2011

Google introduced the rel="next" and rel="prev" link attributes to fix crawl and duplication problems created by pagination. Google also announced that they had improved automatic consolidation and canonicalization for "View All" pages.

516 Algo Updates - September 21, 2011

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Congress that Google made 516 updates in 2010. They tested over 13,000 updates.

Panda 2.5 - September 28, 2011

Google rolled out another Panda update & effected some sites, reported large-scale losses.

Panda "Flux" - October 5, 2011

Other minor Panda updates occurred on 10/3, 10/13, and 11/18.

Query Encryption - October 18, 2011

Google announced they would be encrypting search queries, for privacy reasons. In Google Analytics, this disrupted organic keyword referral data, returning "(not provided)" for some organic traffic.

Freshness Update - November 3, 2011

This update primarily affected time-sensitive results, but signaled a much stronger focus on recent content.

Panda 3.1 - November 18, 2011

After Panda 2.5, Google entered a period of "Panda Flux" where updates started to happen more frequently and were relatively minor. Some industry analysts called the 11/18 update 3.1, even though there was no official 3.0.

December 10-Pack - December 1, 2011

Updates included related query refinements, parked domain detection, blog search freshness, and image search freshness.

2010 Updates
Google Places – April 2010

·         Google maps rebranded Google Places, integrated places pages more closely with local search results.

May Day – May 2010

·         Algorithm change impacting the long tail traffic especially large scale thin content

Caffeine (Roll out) – June 2010

·         Google speed crawling & indexation with a 50% fresher index.

Brand Update – August 2010

·         Same Domain appears multiple times on a SERP

Google Instant – September 2010

·         Google instant introduced for displaying search results as a Query.

Instant Preview – November 2010

·         A magnifying glass icon appeared on Google search result for quick preview of landing page directly from Search Result pages.

2009 Updates

Vince – February 2009

·         Major update that seemed to favor Big Brands

Rel – Canonical Tag – February 2009

·         Google / Yahoo / Microsoft announced support for the canonical tag

Caffeine – August 2009

·         Massive infrastructure change for speed crawling and indexation

Real Time Search – December 2009

·         Real time search was for Real – Twitter feeds / Google News / Newly indexed Content including social media.

2008 Updates
Demey – April 2008

·         Ranking changed drastically. Large differences in ranking between these data centers.

Google Suggest – August 2008

·         Introduced suggested searches in a drop down

2007 Updates
Universal Search – May 2007

·         Google integrated News / Video / Images / Local and other verticals

Buffy – June 2007

·         Buffy was just an accumulation of smaller changes

2006 Updates
Supplemental Update – November 2006

·         Changes to supplemental index

2005 Updates
Nofollow – January 2005

·         Google, Yahoo & Microsoft introduced to Control outbound link quality

Allegra – February 2005

·         Beginning to penalize suspicious links

Bourbon – February 2005

·         Duplicate content & Non-Canonical like www vs. non-www urls

Xml Sitemap – June 2005

·         Google allowed XML Sitemaps via Webmasters Tools.

Personalized Search – June 2005

·         Search History to Automatically Adjust Result

Gilligan – September 2005

·         Toolbar PR Updates only once every 3 months

Jagger – October 2005

·         Targeted at low-quality links like Reciprocal links, Link Farms & Paid Links

Big Daddy – December 2005

·         Infrastructure update,  URL Canonicalization &  Redirects (301 / 302)

2004 Updates
Austin – January 2004

·         Hilltop Algorithm – Detecting deceptive on-page tactics, invisible text and META-TAG Stuffing

Brandy – February 2004

·         Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

·         Anchor Text Relevance

·         Understand Synonyms and took keyword analysis next level

2003 Updates
Florida Update – November 2003

·         90’s Negative SEO Tactics / Keyword Stuffing

Supplemental Index – September 2003

Fritz update – July 2003

·         Index was Changing Daily

Esmerelda – June 2003

·         Google Dance Replaced Everflux

Dominic – May 2033

Cassandra – April 2003

·         Link Quality Issue, Hidden text & Hidden Lines

Boston – Feb 2003

·         The first Named Google Update

2002 Updates Boston - September 2002

·         Monthly Google Dance

2000 Updates
Google Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) Launched