Each year, Google Search algorithms are updated thousands of times to ensure the most relevant, reliable results are listed most prominently.
This ongoing commitment to searcher experience and the quality of results has helped Google decrease the number of irrelevant results appearing on a search results page by over 40% over the past five years, the search engine says.
While the vast majority of these updates go unnoticed, every so often one comes along that really rocks the SEO boat.
In this column, we’ll take a look back at the updates that shaped SEO over this past year and how they may impact your plans going forward.
1. The Page Experience Update
Google began rolling out its long-awaited Page Experience update in June 2021 and announced its completion on September 2.
SEO professionals and marketers of all stripes had anxiously awaited this one since it was first revealed back in November 2020.
Page Experience is pretty self-explanatory; it was designed to improve the experience searchers have on each website. The score takes into account:
- Core Web Vitals: A set of metrics that measure page performance from a UX perspective.
- Mobile usability: A page must have no mobile usability errors.
- Security issues: Any security issues for a site disqualify all pages on the site from a Good status.
- HTTPS usage: A page must be served over HTTPS to be eligible for Good page experience status.
- Ad Experience: A site must not use advertising techniques that are distracting, interruptive, or otherwise not conducive to a good user experience.
Since the initial rollout, Google has clarified that Safe Browsing is not a ranking signal.
An August 4, 2021, update to this Google Search Central blog post states that, “Safe Browsing systems continue to play an important role to keep users of Google Search safe, and any flags will continue to be surfaced in Search Console outside of Page Experience report.”
2. Google’s Link Spam Update
Google warned marketers in July that its Link Spam Update would have measurable results for those affected:
“In our continued efforts to improve the quality of the search results, we’re launching a new link spam fighting change today — which we call the “link spam update…
Sites taking part in link spam will see changes in Search as those links are re-assessed by our algorithms.”
The update announcement was buried in a Google Search Central Blog post under the subheading ‘Improving our systems to fight link spam.’
It read:
“In our continued efforts to improve the quality of the search results, we’re launching a new link spam fighting change today — which we call the “link spam update.”
This algorithm update, which will rollout across the next two weeks, is even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam more broadly, across multiple languages.”
At the time, Google advised that SEO pros and marketers ensure they are following best practices for inbound and outgoing links, creating high-quality content, and focusing on improving user experience.