WOW... Is this bigger than Panda? Google says it is.... 35% effected

[iAmNameLess]

Source - Google Search Algorithm Change For Freshness To Impact 35% Of Searches; Twitter Firehose Remains Off


Google announced they are rolling out a new search algorithm change that helps make the search results “fresher.” The big news here is that besides for the results being fresher, the results will change for about 35% of all searches. Caffeine Was Infrastructure, This Is Algorithmic

Fresher results can make for more relevant results, which is why Google moved over to the caffeine infrastructure last year. That was only an infrastructure change, to make sure Google can index, crawl and return results faster. Now Google changed their search algorithm to show fresher results, fresher than ever before.
Google said:

We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.

35% Of The Searches Are Impacted

That is larger than the Panda update which impacted 12% of the searches conducted.
What type of searches does it impact? Google said:

• Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.
• Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.
• Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: Had a chance to get some questions answered from Google now, plus some addition issues, below….
Freshness Ranking Not New, Just Apparently Improved

It’s not new for Google to do a boost of fresh content. “Query Deserved Freshness” is a content ranking factor that dates back to 2007. The Caffeine update of last year made it possible, Google said, to gather content even faster, which in turn could potentially be ranked better.
So what’s different now? Apparently, freshness is getting even more rewarded, having an impact on one out of three searches. That’s huge — though it’s unclear what it was before. For all we know, 35% of searches were already being impacted by freshness ranking. The previous number was never stated (and yes, we’re checking with Google on this).
Postscript: Google says the change is providing “fresh” content for twice as many queries as before. In other words, the old “freshness” algorithm had an impact on about 17.5% of queries. Now it impacts double that figure, 35%.
Potential For “Freshness” Spam

There are potential downsides. Sometimes you do want to reward fresh content. But what’s fresh? If someone simply makes a small change to a page, does that give it a fresh boost? If someone reposts exactly the same content on a new page a day or two after initially posting it, is that fresh? Is when the page was first found define freshness, or is the first modified date used?
Does this open Google up to an even worse situation than can already happen with Google News now, where publishers file and refile stories in an effort to win the freshness race there, since the latest versions of stories often get top billing.
Rewarding freshness potentially introduces huge decreases in relevancy, new avenues for spamming or getting “light” content in. Most likely, Google’s going to use a combination of search ranking factors to help qualify when it wants to trust something is both fresh and good.
Google wouldn’t say how “freshness” is being determined, but it did tell us in response to questions that being fresh wasn’t the only thing being rewarded:

Freshness is one component, but we also look at the content of the result, including topicality and quality.

Postscript: Google now tells us that one of the freshness factors — the way they determine if content is fresh or not — is the time when they first crawled a page. So if you publish a page, and then change that page, it doesn’t suddenly become “fresh.”
Freshest Info Still Missing: Twitter

Also unclear is the situation with Twitter. The largest amount of “fresh” information on the web are tweets. Despite the growth of Google+, the volume of tweets happening far eclipses the content there.
Google has been without timely access to tweets since July. It simply cannot crawl Twitter fast enough without receiving the “firehose” of Twitter data to keep up. Today’s announcement does nothing to solve this. Google is only introducing a ranking change, not an indexing change that brings in more tweets.
I asked about this issue, how Google still lacks the Twitter firehose and was told:

Often times when there’s breaking news, microblogs are the first to publish. We’re able to show results for recent events or hot topics within minutes of the page being indexed, but we’re always looking for ways we can serve you relevant information faster and will work to continue improving

35% Change Doesn’t Mean 35% Improvement

A final but important caveat. It’s important not to misinterpret the percentage Google gave out — a 35% change to its results — to mean they are 35% improved.
I saw this the first time we saw Google start talking about a percentage change to it search results, when the Panda Update was said to create at 12% impact. Some assumed that meant a 12% improvement. It didn’t.
We have no commonly accepted way of rating search engine result quality in a numeric fashion. No third party measures if Google or Bing’s results are “90%” good, for example. This means there’s no way to say whether something has improved by a particular percentage.
Google is clear what it means when it puts these percentages out. I’ve never seen them say that they’re to be interpreted as some type of improvement metric. But people do make that mistake — and shouldn’t.




So what do you guys think?

[timpears]

Seems to me that you just have to throw up as much stuff to the web as you can and hope it ranks. If it does, then Google will change it and later is wont. So hopefully you have enough stuff up there that something else of yours will rank.

This just seems very frustrating to me. I am not real good at getting stuff to rank now. A few of my pages are on page one, but most don't appear anywhere to be found. Will any of these changes find them? Who knows. I guess I just have to keep throwing stuff up there and hope something works.

[thebitbotdotcom]

Woot! Woot! This is our chance guys and gals! Time to knock off some of those stale sites that have been sitting at top spots since the 90's for no reason...

[yukon]

A thread was already started about this subject:

Google's Latest Update Even Bigger Than Panda!

Again, before everyone is panic stricken, this update won't impact 65% of keyword/search.

Example, a site with 100 pages about how to lower insurance cost knows to keep doing the same seo, quality links + on-page seo.

I never understand why people can't comprehend that Google SERPs are not static, the algorithm evolves every single day, still the basics never change (quality links + on-page seo).

[John Ac]

Wow... not again. It looks to me that we are in a war more than ever, but here I agree with yukon, I think if you keep it simple you can succeed.

Thank you very much for this post... I did not see it on today news.

[BarryOnline]

Any word on when this will be rolled out?

[wolfmmiii]

I believe it has already been rolled out based on the wording.

[paulgl]

Not sure what is different. Google has always tried to
guess as to what you are searching for. Of course it
will effect 35% of searches because that's the percent
of searches that are looking for recent events/items.

So, if your site is not one of those....

Google has never had a top 10 on their basic search site,
unlike yahoo and others. But they have given news results,
videos, etc. for some search terms. Same thing, really,
just internal. You can find the trends, but you have to dig.

"Different searches have different freshness needs."

Well, no kidding. Nothing new there. Some sites I have
to update, some sites I have let ride for years with
minor tweaks.

Not sure the need to quote a whole article from searchengineland.
They have their own agenda.

Why not just quote google?

Paul