SEO Explained in Simple Terms

“Medic” Core Update – 1st August 2018

Google confirmed a “broad core algorithm update,” with wide reports of massive impact. It mainly affected a lot of sites in the health industry, thus the name of “Medic” core updates.

Mobile First Indexing Update — 26th March 2018

Google announced that they will be indexing the mobile version of the website first, taking a mobile-first index approach. Thus, striving an importance on having a mobile website.

“Maccabees ” Update (Formerly known as Fred — December 10, 2017

Barry Schwartz of SERoundtable named it Maccabees in recognition of Hanukkah. Google spokesperson mentioned that the changes are meant to improve relevancy, but not much details are mentioned.

“Fred” Update — 8th March 2017

Google rolled out a major update, with reports of widespread impacts across the SEO community. When asked, Gary Illyes of Google jokingly referred to as “Fred” update and the name has been stuck ever since.

Penguin 4.0 (Real time) – 23th September 2016

Google Penguin 4.0 After a much-awaited 2-year gap, Google has rolled out Penguin 4.0. This will be the last update in Penguin as it will now run in real-time and is also more granular.

Unnamed Update (aka John Doe update) – 8th January 2016

Google introduced an update but details remain sketchy on what is it all about. They only confirmed it as a “Core Algorithms Update”.

RankBrain – 26th October 2015

Google introduced a new ranking signal called RankBrain, which uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to deliver better search results. This covers all languages and is mainly used for the 15% of everyday search queries which Google hasn’t seen before.

Panda 4.2 Update – 17th July 2015

Another Panda Update was officially confirmed . The only difference this time was that it was a slow roll out, and took as long as a couple of months. Learn more about it here.

Mobile Friendly Update – 21st April 2015

Google made an official update announcement on their Google Webmaster Blog. This change affected mobile searches in all languages worldwide and also had a significant impact on mobile search results.

Penguin 3.0 – 17th October 2014

Google launched another Penguin refresh. This update appeared to be smaller than expected (<1% of US/English queries affected).

Panda 4.1 – 23th September 2014

Google announced another significant Panda update, which included an algorithmic component. It was estimated to affect around 3-5% of queries.

Pigeon – 24th July 2014

The Pigeon update focused on local SEO to dramatically alter some local results and modify how they handle and interpret location cues.

Hummingbird – 24th August 2013

The Hummingbird update was a major overhaul to the all-important concept of semantics, or meaning. It was rolled out to combat the increasing longer search queries key in searches.

Penguin – 24th April 2012

The Penguin update was a major algorithm that targeted sites spamming its search results, in particular those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings.

Panda – 23th February 2011

The Panda update was a major algorithm update which hit sites hard, affecting up to 12% of search results (a number that came directly from Google). Panda is mainly focused on low-quality (thin) content, sites with high ad-to-content ratios, and a number of other quality issues.

Caffeine – June 2010

The Caffeine update was a refreshment to Google’s infrastructure which not only boosted Google’s raw speed, but integrated crawling and indexation much more tightly, resulting in (according to Google) a 50% fresher index.

Big Daddy – December 2005

The Big Daddy update was an infrastructure update which changed the way Google handles URL canonicalization, redirects (301/302) and other technical issues.

Florida – November 2003

The Florida update was the death of low-value late-90s SEO tactics, such as keyword stuffing.