Does Google Still Make Major Changes in its Algo?

[aristotle]

Periodically I see threads in which someone reports a widespread and major shakeup in Google's SERPs for numerous search terms.

This always puzzles me. I'm puzzled because at this stage of the game Google shouldn't need to be making major changes in its algo. After all, they've been working on it for at least ten years. They should have identified the main factors and determined their relative importance long ago. Yes, major "updates" have occurred in the past, but why would they be needed at this stage?

Of course they still make minor refinements, but minor refinements wouldn't cause major shakeups in the SERPs. Of course the web is always changing, but these are gradual changes, not sudden abrupt changes.

And if Google is still making major changes, isn't this an admission that they are still uncovering big flaws in their algo?

[tedster]

Yes, Google still makes major changes in its algo. But I don't think of it as meaning the algo was flawed, anymore than newer automobile technology means that last year's car was "flawed".

Search is a very hard problem - what is someone actually looking for when they type in a given keyword phrase? A tecchie may be looking for "web pages with this phrase" but that's not the average searcher -- and it is the general public that Google aims to serve most of all. So one big bucket for many of Google's algo changes is better meeting the end user intentions.

And of course, as with any complex program, there are loopholes - we might call them "edge cases". Some people do find ways to exploit those loopholes, and their pages may rank well in spite of what Google intends. When patterns like this become clear, then Google moves to counteract that adversarial factor - and that is a second big bucket of algo changes. In such cases, you might call it a flaw - but it's a flaw that was only exposed over time by some cunning adversaries.

There is a third bucket - Google does make mistakes in execution, or they create unforeseen combination side-effects as they work on buckets 1 and 2. Those mistakes need to be fixed, and we might call that bucket #3.

[aristotle]

That's a good answer, Tedster. At least it shows that Google is still looking for ways to improve the algo.

[Reno]

The word "major" no doubt means different things to different people. Using tedster's automobile analogy, to me an example of a "major" change would be for GM to announce that all it's passenger cars would be hybrids starting next year. Much of the other stuff is cosmetic styling changes, or extra bells & whistles (built in GPS; drop down dvd players, etc). I can't say with any certainty that Google will never again overhaul it's core engine -- "never say never" as they say -- but given how high the stakes are in search (especially with MS actually having a real alternative in bing), I'll be genuinely surprised to see a truly radical revision in the Google algo anytime soon.

...............................

[tedster]

I'll be genuinely surprised to see a truly radical revision in the Google algo anytime soon.

I'm with you on that. It seems to me that they want to phase changes in gradually these days. Matt Cutts seems very happy when they make a change and almost no one mentions it around the web.

[aristotle]

Didn't Matt Cutts say that the recently-much-discussed change in their treatment of nofollow links was made more than a year ago, but nobody outside Google even realized it.

[aristotle]

In reading through another thread here, I kept seeing statements about an unusual amount of turmoil in Google's SERPs which apparently started around the beginning of June and still continues.

Is this an example of a "major" change in Google's algo? If so, why is the instability being extended out over such a long time period? I'm puzzled again.

[tedster]

Ever since Google introduced the Big Daddy infrastructure, every day sees some churn across the SERPs. One reason is that each day Google indexes the results of new spidering and they recalculate PR, link juice, trust etc continually on that basis.

Another reason for churn in the SERPs is that algo tweaks of all kind are made - around 400 total of such events last year.

Things were quieter in May and June than they had been earlier in the year. But then in early July churn went up really high. Since then churn has fallen off a bit -- but it's still pretty high.
More like it was in early spring, rather than the quiet we had in May and June.

So my feeling is that some relatively major algo change happened in early July, and whatever the new factor is, it's now alive and kicking up more daily change than we've seen in a while.

[aristotle]

Thanks Tedster. I apparently mis-interpreted the early June part of the thread. Anyway, it's interesting that the level of "daily churn" may have undergone a permanent uptick.

[tedster]

Yes - it looks like a return to Feb to Apr levels. Churn may have been low while this current change was being prepared. There were several periods of intensified spidering, just leading up to August.

[mrguy]

What I miss about stable serps is being able to find the same site you found the day before. We had a family get together and my uncle wanted to show me a site he had found on google but when we typed in the phrase he used, it was nowhere to be seen and he could not remember the site URL. So, we tried the same phrase in Bing, and there it was.

There is something to be said about stable serps and having to much churn will turn people away. My uncle is now using Bing as his search engine.

[pbaddock]

its a change in the way Google thinks itself ..

in the past it was a plain simple stripped back search engine - the most relevant and promoted websites for any given search were ranked the highest.

now Google are moving to be more of an information portal/gateway
- rankings fluctuate more so the SERP's don't get stale with old established sites
- allows for the sharing of traffic across various "quality" sites.
- trusted and known brands rank better than before - quality
- this inspires higher CTR on paid adverts + the commercial reality is that some websites will spend more when their ranks fluctuate
- injection of interesting visual content in the SERP's also inspires greater interaction on the results page (higher amount of clicks on links) + more engaging for searchers
- greater interaction and use of human reviewer feedback in the ranking of sites - quality and appearance matter!

Continued innovation is a driving factor within Google.

[mrguy]

Continued innovation is a driving factor within Google.

I agree, however you can only innovate a search engine to a point. I know, they are trying to make it think for you, but AI search engines are a ways off and I don't need Google thinking they know what I'm searching for. I expect them to take the phrase I type in, and give me the most relevant results to that phrase.

If I want to buy blue widgets and that is my phrase, I want sites that sale blue widgets and not a bunch of videos or blogs.

I don't find their serps engaging in the least bit since they are constantly changing and not for the better in at least the areas I search for.

Personally, the new innovations they have put into place have turned me away from using them when several years ago, they were the only search engine I would use.

I'm not the only one who feels this way and time will tell if they remain the dominant force for another 10 years.