Google has rolled out its latest algorithm update to build on last year’s Caffeine system. Caragh McKenna, senior manager of SEO at The Search Agency, explores the implications for B2B brands
Never one to be complacent, Google has launched an algorithm update with a focus on freshness. This builds on last year’s Caffeine/QDDF web indexing system, which aims to refine search results in order to only deliver the results that people are really searching for; whether that’s up-to-the-minute news, a summary of information from a week ago, or an older page. Google’s software engineer, Amit Singhal, who outlined in his blog post that “different searches have different freshness needs”, hailed the new era of Google searches, giving Internet users what they really want. So what’s changed?
1. Regularly occurring updates
Singhal pointed out that the new rollout is designed for three main types of search; the first being regularly recurring events, such as social media stats. Google will now assume that the searcher is looking for the most up-to-date information. For example, the most recent industry statistics, as opposed to statistics from last year. It seems logical.
2. Hot topics
The second area is concerned with recent events or hot topics (it overlaps somewhat with above). When someone is searching for a hot topic, Google will assume that they want the very latest
up-to-date information. For example, when searching for ‘eprivacy directive’ or information about the iPhone 4S, the searcher is probably seeking out the latest information.
3. Review updates
The third area is frequent updates. This affects reviews of products and services rather than more news-orientated stories. It is now going to be more important than ever to keep an eye on reviews, as they will appear in general search results.
These updates open up a new opportunity for marketers as they give the latest campaigns a better opportunity to be seen more than ever before. The key to unlocking this new space is fresh and relevant content in your business’ field.
Google hopes this new update will make the search engine more intuitive, which means that for searches on recent events or news, Google will now display top results, which may have only been created a few minutes ago.
In order for businesses to maintain or increase their rankings, websites must host fresh and relevant content and hijack current industry trends for Google to pick up on and display.
B2B marketers cannot misinterpret this update as irrelevant to them. The new shake-up is said to affect 35 per cent of searches – that’s nearly three times as many as Google’s previous Panda update, which was solely designed to remove spammer sites from search results.
Perk up your search marketing
So how can marketers translate this into practice? The best way websites can benefit from this update is to jump on the hot topics aspect of the update, by having an awareness of, and speaking about the latest trends and issues in their industry.
Can your business offer any other insightful input in to these areas? If so, get uploading content and ensure you use keywords so content can be identified by Google spiders. An efficient and easy way to have sight of trending topics within your industry is to keep an eye on Twitter, survey industry media sites and competitor comments. Companies are regularly updating websites with press releases, but can you offer more industry input, in the form of points of view? Setting up feeds to keep on top of the very latest industry news as it breaks will provide daily material to comment on, whether it’s about the market, your competitors or comments on general trends through thought-leadership pieces.
It’s crucial that not only is the content new and relevant to your industry, but that it is not duplicated content from elsewhere, hence an emphasis on ‘freshness’ rather than ‘newness’.
Google will penalise sites that have duplicated content on its pages. The search giant is pushing your business to become more vocal and it will reward you with higher rankings.
Google has also implemented several other features resulting in a visually different search results page. It recently started a migration of paid adverts from the side of the organic search results to the bottom of the page, which has already caused some upset.
Today, we are seeing more integrated results, with maps, reviews and paid search creating a more blended Google results page than what we were once familiar with. Local results are also appearing in both local and organic searches – this is another area that marketers need to make sure they are on top of. This means that businesses need to have all aspects of search covered; having a listing on Google maps, images associated with trending issues and correctly tagging multimedia.
As usual these latest updates have been announced as they are implemented in the US, with no prior warning.
Luckily, here in the UK we have the benefit of a slower roll-out to monitor, but businesses need to be reminded that they cannot be complacent when it comes to SEO; it’s a rolling game that requires an ongoing approach.
