Inside Search is Google's way of sharing critical search algorithm changes with the SEO community. The latest Google algorithm changes highlights some exciting changes that many SEOs have been waiting anticipating for months, if not longer.

How Google's Latest Algorithm Changes Affect How We Do SEO

Although some of the changes may be lost on those who are not familiar with SEO, WebiMax wants to respond to some of these changes by explaining how it may impact our SEO services and clients.

Related query results refinements: Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”

This update refers to long-tail keyword terms. As part of our SEO strategy, WebiMax looks to optimize our clients' websites for terms that are likely to result in conversions, such as sales or inquiries. This change will likely boost the visibility of our online retail clients for specific products.

More comprehensive indexing: This change makes more long-tail documents available in our index, so they are more likely to rank for relevant queries.

This update coincides with the previous item and will likely improve the visibility of pages that are very specific in nature.

New “parked domain” classifier: This is a new algorithm for automatically detecting parked domains. Parked domains are placeholder sites that are seldom useful and often filled with ads. They typically don’t have valuable content for our users, so in most cases we prefer not to show them.

This is an extremely beneficial update that limits the power of exact-match domains that do nothing but sell ad space. By eliminating these wasted results, Google should begin to display more content-relevant websites, a key focus of every WebiMax SEO campaign.

Fresher and more complete blog search results: We made a change to our blog search index to get coverage that is both fresher and more comprehensive.

Blogs have always been an important part of our SEO strategy, especially blogs with useful and relevant content. This update should help to reduce the rankings of blogs that are written for the sole purpose of stuffing keywords. WebiMax has always encouraged clients to create unique content that is likely to be shared by others.

Original content: We added new signals to help us make better predictions about which of two similar web pages is the original one.

This is a huge update that should help to reduce the rankings of scraper sites. A scraper website is usually an automated website that literally copies the content of another site and posts it as its own. WebiMax has and will always create 100% unique content for clients while educating them on how to protect themselves from content scrapers.

Top result selection code rewrite: This code handles extra processing on the top set of results. For example, it ensures that we don’t show too many results from one site (“host crowding”). We rewrote the code to make it easier to understand, simpler to maintain and more flexible for future extensions.

This has been a common complaint in the SEO industry and it's great to see it being addressed. With only 10 results per page, allowing a single site to own the top 3 spots seemed unbalanced. This should improve the visibility of websites that may normally have appeared on page 2. And as many SEOs know, moving a client's page up in rankings on the first page becomes a battle of inches where every little bit can impact a campaign's performance.

WebiMax is committed to delivering exceptional results for our clients and that means constantly seeking out the latest information. Even though our SEO methods involved creating quality websites with quality content, important algorithm changes may impact websites in a variety of ways.