Google recently confirmed that they had released an update to their core algorithm. This came from an AMA (Ask Me Anything) done during SMX West with Nathan Johns, who is a search quality analyst with Google, and was also confirmed from a post on Twitter.

It’s well known that Google makes many algorithm changes throughout the year (some estimates put this around 500) but this one was a little different because it was part of the core algorithm. Core updates happen less frequently, as stated in the Tweet, we only see them a few times per year.

So, what did this update do?
According to the reps at Google, the intent of this update was to benefit “pages that were previously under-rewarded”. This is a bit of a change for Google since most algorithm updates tend to penalize sites instead of rewarding them. In typical Google fashion, it is somewhat unclear from their statements on what this exactly means. The folks over at Search Engine Watch did some digging into this to find out. According to their research, the update looks to have been designed to improve results page listings to better reflect user intent. Updates in the past focused more on quality of content while this one appears to have looked at the nature and relevancy of the content benefiting those sites that more accurately answer the users question regardless of the perceived quality of the content.

What was the impact?
The research performed by Search Engine Watch showed that search engine listings were impacted a few weeks ago with several sites dropping out of listings but mostly returning once the algorithm change was made official. Thruline monitors keyword rankings for most of our inbound clients and our data showed very little if any impact for the keywords and sites that we monitor. We speculate that the reason for that is almost all of our clients’ sites are on .edu domains. From our experience and research, we’ve noticed that .edu domains tend to receive a certain level of leniency with most algorithm changes although this isn’t always the case.

What does this mean?
This algorithm update, and others like it, continue to reinforce the philosophy and methodology of the Thruline inbound team. The way to stay safe from algorithm changes is to create great content that has the searchers interest in mind. If your site experienced a drop in rankings, look to the content on the page that saw the decline in rank. If this content doesn’t do a good job of explaining things or answering the questions your visitors are likely to have, now is the time to refresh that content.

Allen Harkleroad, Manager of Inbound Marketing