Google Algorithm Updates May 2012
As in every month, Google has posted about the algorithm updates the search engine underwent during the previous month. On May 2012, Google had settled for 39 updates, excluding the Knowledge Graph update, including the first Penguin update, described here as “a couple minor tweaks to improve signals and refresh the data used by the penguin algorithm.” Google has also reported on improving the application that identifies inorganic backlinks, an improvement designed to make sure it is being properly used in website ranking.
SEO Related Algorithmic Updates
Titles – last month Google has dedicated three updates related to webpages’ titles. The updates will make it possible for the search engine to display a shorter title instead of the too-long current title (as long as it is as accurate as the longer title), and to prevent neutral texts that do not describe the pages (such as “go back”) to be displayed on the search results as titles.
Freshness – Google has updated the freshness algorithms so that webpages that cover recent major news events will appear on search results within minutes from the occurrences of the events. They have also added a new classifier designed to detect fresh content searches and simplified the freshness algorithm to make it easy for them to fix bugs and identify signals.
Rankings – Google has announced improving the performance of the ranking algorithm (an update that received the launch code name “DropSmallCFeatures”), in order to improve significantly “the efficiency of our scoring infrastructure with minimal impact on the quality of our results”.
Additionally, Google has improved local search algorithm on tablets, added sports search features and rich music snippets that would facilitate searchers for music via desktop or mobile, and also improved the autocomplete mechanism for mobile users.