As marketers head to 2022, most of them need to ask themselves one critical question: Which search updates from 2021 should they be keeping in mind?
Every year Google comes up with several algorithmic updates geared towards optimizing users’ experiences and helping searchers discover the information they need as quickly as possible. One of the significant features of these algorithmic updates by Google is that these updates focus on weeding out poor content and boosting the content that fits into the E-A-T criteria (i.e. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
Google algorithms help the end-users search out the web pages that contain the keywords that contain the keywords that users used to search. The rank of each of the pages is based on several factors, including how many times the keywords appear on the page. Google references this index whenever a user enters a search query.
In this blog post, I’ve covered the top 10 most influential algorithmic updates for 2021, in chronological order. All of these updates have emerged as an important hint for marketers to help them optimize their content according to these updates. Let’s delver into:
1. Passage Ranking Update (February 2021)
Google introduced the passage ranking update in February 2021. This was launched initially in US English SERPs (but expected to eventually roll out globally). This update was important to track how Google shifts through and ranks long-form content. Passage ranking was a new way for Google to rank passages on a web page. This update is a more effective way of examining long-form content on a page and determining the context of the given passages.
With this update, Google can now better understand specific passages of a web page and decide if a given fragment of text best answers a specific query. With this update, Google aimed to use AI for understanding content making it easier for Google to rank a particular page.
2. 100% Mobile-First Indexing Update (March 2021)
Google has used the desktop version of websites and then confirmed it would be used as a default for new sites. The March 2021 mobile-first indexing as Google 100% focuses on the mobile versions of pages.
Google has adjusted its algorithm to rank its website in search based upon its mobile version. So for better ranking, marketers must ensure using more responsive design for their websites.
3. Product Reviews Update (April 2021)
Back in April 2021, Google came up with a product reviews update that was meant to promote high-quality product reviews. With this update, the marketers who have been making positive changes to their content will be able to witness and track the improvement in their content strategy. Google also promoted two best practices for product reviews, to take effect in a future update:
- Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authority of review of particular brands
- Include links to multiple sellers to give readers the option to purchase from the merchant of their choice
With this update, Google helped the audiences looking for in-depth expert knowledge of products. Product comparisons, quantitative data, and expert opinions are necessary for ranking well for a product review.
4. MUM Update (June 2021)
Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) update was landed in June 2021; the update redefined the search relevance changing the way people search on the internet. With this update, Google removed the need to carry out multiple searches that users currently do in order to compare and gain deeper insights. This update could understand and bring solutions based not just on textual content but also on the interpretation of images, videos, and podcasts in a way that was never possible before.
The update could understand 75 different languages which imply that it can pool and serve results to give users the most holistic and comprehensive search experience, answering even the most complex queries.
With the update, Google aimed to overcome language and format barriers to deliver an improved search experience. The update was an innovative solution that accesses a wealth of previously hidden information around a core query, providing more of what we want without having to carry out multiple different searches.
The MUM update could understand and translate 75 different languages including text and images and was perceived by some as a bid to say farewell to BERT. MUM is a natural language (called multitask unifies model) that uses contextual information from various sources to answer complex queries. If marketers keep their content well-structured and target question keywords, they can specifically benefit from MUM.
5. Link Spam Update (June 2021)
Websites taking part in link spam will witness changes in search as those links are being re-assessed by Google algorithms. Google with this algorithmic update planned to turn a blind eye to the spammy links. All incoming and outgoing links will be reviewed for spam, across multiple languages. Any link that Google deems spam will be simply ignored.
This algorithmic update introduced on June 26, was amongst the newest efforts by Google in fighting poor content from ranking high.
According to Google, this update is ”’even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam more broadly, across multiple languages. Sites taking part in link spam will witness changes in Search as those links are re-assessed by our algorithms.
So, it became clear that with this algorithmic update, Google was getting much better at spotting these unnatural links and they were planning to nullify them, i.e. ignore them in their ranking algorithms.
If the targeted web results and image results are cracking down on malicious tactics utilized by some site owners, they must check the underlying security issues, clean up spammy actions, and use no index.
6. Page Experience Update (June 2021)
With the page experience update, Google intended to provide the users with a better experience by prioritizing the pages that offered a quality page performance. That’s when the page loading time became important and the search algorithms started prioritizing non-shifting and stable pages.
This update rolled out by Google included newly prioritized factors to quantify a person’s experience of a webpage comprising Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and cumulative layout Shift (CLS). Marketers must take steps to improve their core web vitals.
7. Page Title Update (August 2021)
Google on August 24, 2021, rolled the Page Title Update. Google informed the masses of a new system that could be used to generate titles for website pages.
Google stated in a blog, ”’In particular, we are making use of text that humans can visually see when they arrive at a webpage”’We consider the main visual title or headline shown on a page, content that site owners often place within <H1> tags, within other header tags, or which is made large and prominent through the use of style treatments.
In addition to using headers and text on a webpage, Google revealed there are instances where they may also use anchor text within links that point to the pages.
After this update, Google has marked the arrival of a new system that wouldn’t adjust titles according to queries, but will better represent the page as a whole.
8. Core Update (November 2021)
Google’s November 2021 core update hit fast and hard. This update was far more volatile than the July 2021 update as was revealed in research by Semrush.
(Image Source: Semrush.com)
The health sector witnessed 41% more volatility on both desktop and mobile in November 2021 core update than it did back in July 2021 core update. The health sector was more impacted by this core update than any other sector.
To add to this, 16% of the top 20 results were not listed in the Google Search results prior to the November update. This meant that 16% of the ranking URLs between positions 1-20 ranked worse than position 20 prior to the update. This core update was broad, wide, and covered a lot of quality issues. So, for the sites hit by a core update, it is advisable to often step back from it all, take a wider view of your overall website, and see what you can do to improve the site overall. This update was geared towards fighting spam within search engine results.
9. Local Search Update (30th November 2021 to 8th December)
Google rolled a local search update from November 30 through December 8 and this overlapped other ranking updates and a Google map and local pack update design change. Google reinforced that this update was about the rebalancing of various factors that we consider in generating local results. This update led to significant local ranking changes in The Google Maps and local pack results. This, along with the new local interface update, resulted in traffic changes to many client businesses.
Keeping abreast with this algorithmic change is all about rebalancing various factors that we consider important in generating local search results. The proximity of searchers to business is considered and marketers must consider discounting the value of keywords in the company name.
10. Product Review Update (December 2021)
The Product Review Update by Google in December 2021 was aimed towards improving the quality of usefulness of reviews shown to the users. This served as the ranking signal and rewarded websites with genuine, high-quality reviews. Here are the two new guidelines for site owners from Google’s new blog post:
- Site owners must provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of their own experience with the product, to support their expertise and reinforce the authenticity of their review.
- Marketers must include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from the merchant of their choice.
Wrap Up
Google’s algorithms work for you by searching-out web pages that contain the keywords you searched. These pages are then assigned ranks based on several factors including the frequency of keywords that appeared on the SERPs. Google references this index when a user enters a search query.
Google exists to provide answers to exactly what the users are searching for and therefore, Google’s algorithmic updates are quintessential to make the Google SERPs more relevant to the searchers’ intent. Webmasters must keep themselves abreast of the Google algorithmic updates to figure out when algorithm updates happened, what changes were made and how well they ranked your site. Tracking all these factors helps website owners and webmasters secure a better online rank. Marketers should keep abreast of the algorithmic changes to figure out what factors are positively impacting their websites and which ones they need to focus on to improve or which ones are hurting you.
Google algorithmic updates might impact brand awareness, conversion, ROI, organic traffic, audience retention, search ranking, revenue, search visibility, and organic search traffic and therefore, the SEO webmasters and website owners should keep an eye on Google algorithmic updates.
