Google Updates that rolled out in 2021
2021 was a year of updates by Google. There were quite a few updates and here is a look at them and how it could affect your website.
Passage ranking
The passage ranking update was floated in February 2021. Passage Indexing involves the ranking of individual passages within a page. This is dependent on the search results based on search queries put in by the users. To put it in simpler terms, consider this particular post. It talks about all the updates that have rolled out this year. But if a user was looking particularly for information on ‘Passage Ranking’, this algorithm will pick out the relevant para from the post and highlight it for the user. With passage indexing, what Google does is that it pulls out sections from your content and ranks it independently.
This algorithm is designed to better reward content that shares in-depth research and not basic content that simply summarizes some products. The product reviews update will better reward such content. This update focuses on providing users with insightful analysis and thoroughly researched content that has been written by experts or enthusiasts who are well versed with the topic. This however isn’t a core algorithm update affects rankings only for a certain type of content such as by businesses that publish “product reviews”.
MUM
The Google Multitask Unified Model (MUM) aims at answering modern search demands by making use of an AI-powered algorithm that helps improve online search capability. This update will eliminate the need for multiple searches that users engage in to compare and gain deeper insights.
Link spam
Link spamming is a common practice that involves embedding links into the website to increase backlinks to a specific page. It does not consider link/page quality or context and the sole goal is to give the page an SEO boost for rankings. This update basically ensures that Google turns a blind eye to any such spammy links and all the inbound or outbound links will be reviewed for spam, across multiple languages. If Google thinks a particular link is spam, it will simply be ignored.
Page experience
What does Google have to say about page experience?
Passage ranking
The passage ranking update was floated in February 2021. Passage Indexing involves the ranking of individual passages within a page. This is dependent on the search results based on search queries put in by the users. To put it in simpler terms, consider this particular post. It talks about all the updates that have rolled out this year. But if a user was looking particularly for information on ‘Passage Ranking’, this algorithm will pick out the relevant para from the post and highlight it for the user. With passage indexing, what Google does is that it pulls out sections from your content and ranks it independently.
Product reviews
This algorithm is designed to better reward content that shares in-depth research and not basic content that simply summarizes some products. The product reviews update will better reward such content. This update focuses on providing users with insightful analysis and thoroughly researched content that has been written by experts or enthusiasts who are well versed with the topic. This however isn’t a core algorithm update affects rankings only for a certain type of content such as by businesses that publish “product reviews”.
MUM
The Google Multitask Unified Model (MUM) aims at answering modern search demands by making use of an AI-powered algorithm that helps improve online search capability. This update will eliminate the need for multiple searches that users engage in to compare and gain deeper insights.
Link spam
Link spamming is a common practice that involves embedding links into the website to increase backlinks to a specific page. It does not consider link/page quality or context and the sole goal is to give the page an SEO boost for rankings. This update basically ensures that Google turns a blind eye to any such spammy links and all the inbound or outbound links will be reviewed for spam, across multiple languages. If Google thinks a particular link is spam, it will simply be ignored.
Page experience
What does Google have to say about page experience?
The page experience signal measures aspects of how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page. Optimizing for these factors makes the website more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile. What this says is basically that if the users love your website the chances of it getting ranked well are higher. What this update ascertains is how user-friendly your website is. We have spoken about user experience in some of our previous posts. This update is just an extension of the same aspects.
These updates will influence how SEO works in your favour. If you are looking for and SEO services, get in touch with us at Trident Web, an SEO company in Pune, India.
