How Big Is Google’s Mobile-Friendly Algorithm? Bigger Than Panda Or Penguin

Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji from the Webmaster Trends team was quoted as saying at SMX Munich this morning that the upcoming mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that will launch on April 21st will have more of an impact on Google’s search results than the Google Panda update and the Google Penguin update did.

Google did say when they announced the mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that this would have a “significant impact” on the mobile search results. This is key, it is only impacting the mobile results and even so, it will have more of an impact than Panda or Penguin.

The question is, what did Zineb mean by that? Is she saying that let’s say this is impacting 40% of mobile search queries, whereas Panda impacted about 12% of all English queries and Penguin was closer to 4% of global queries across both desktop and mobile. Or is she saying that across mobile and desktop, the impact will be larger than Panda or Penguin? We know the mobile-friendly algorithm only impacts mobile search results, so I’d assume she is talking about the mobile impact only.

Zineb from Google did not specifically release a percentage of queries impacted. It is also believes that about 50% of all searches done on Google are on mobile devices.

Mobile SEO Tips To Help You Survive The Coming Google Mopocalypse

How Panda 4.1 Should Change Your Content Strategy

When Panda “4.1″ – another iteration of Google’s algorithm aimed at low-quality web content hit on September 25, some brands saw upward of a 90 percent loss in their organic search footprint, according to initial research conducted at BrightEdge.

What it could mean for your website’s content strategy?

Although Google closely guards its algorithmic secrets, here’s what we know about Panda historically, based on what Google representatives have said about it and on other data analyses shared amongst the web marketing community:

• Panda targets “thin” content on sites, which often equates to a general lack of content
• Panda targets duplicate content, usually when a site has a large volume of it
• Panda targets machine-generated content (what marketers often refer to as “spun content”)

Google hasn’t opened up on the specifics of this latest iteration on the algorithm, but based on initial findings from others around the web and at BrightEdge, we can share data on what types of sites have been impacted positively and negatively. From that, you can make some inferences about how it might affect your site and how you should adjust. For all the details, check out my full post on Marketing Land.

10 Fringe SEO Predictions For 2015

It’s that wonderful time of year when blogs and social media are cluttered with predictions of what the new year will bring. Whether it’s Social Media Predictions for 2015, How SEO Will Change in 2015, or the catch-all Digital Marketing Trends in 2015, it’s all been done – many times over.

After a while, the predictions start to run together as the same things we’ve heard all year – and even the best don’t always turn out to be very accurate. Everybody hits on most if not all of the common themes:

1.      Mobile will continue to grow
2.      Exact keyword use will/should diminish
3.      Knowledge Graph will keep more users on Google.com
4.      Stop the grey/black hat stuff already
5.      Design a website people like
6.      Fake links will be even less helpful, real links will be even harder to earn (and be even more                valuable) — unless, of course, Google keeps getting links confused
7.     I’m not knocking anybody here – we did the 2015 thing, too, and even tried a Halloween spin.

Instead, I want to dive into a handful of the fringe predictions that stick out from the rest.

Google Panda Update

Google’s Panda Update is a search filter introduced in February 2011 meant to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results. Panda is updated from time-to-time. When this happens, sites previously hit may escape, if they’ve made the right changes. Panda may also catch sites that escaped before. A refresh also means “false positives” might get released.

Is This The End Of The Penguin & Panda Era Shakeups And Recoveries?

It’s been several weeks since Penguin 3.0 surfaced, and the overall consensus seems to be…. meh. Not much impact overall. In fact, Google reported less than 1% change across their search results.

We have seen similar results across sites claiming to have been penalized. At RankAbove, we work with a tremendous amount of data. Some of these data are client data and some are data we have been tracking to glean insights.

Across almost 25,000 tracked keywords for sites impacted by Penguin, we saw little change.

Ranking Delta after Penguin

Ranking delta after Penguin 3.0

What does this tell us? Basically, that not a whole lot has changed since the last time the update happened and devastated sites across the web.

There were such high hopes that a Penguin refresh would save the day for many small online businesses, but the results say otherwise. It seems we will not see the same kind of drastic changes we saw in the past. We have finally arrived at the leveling off point and this seems to be the new normal.

But what about all the online businesses who were hoping for their royal pardon? Why haven’t they recovered?

How Google’s Penguin 3.0 Is Playing Out Across The Web

There’s been a lot of debate about how big or small the latest Penguin 3.0 update was. This post won’t offer a measure, but will assemble the information we’ve gathered and suggest what may happen next.

I believe that the indisputable truth about Google’s updates belongs to Google only, and for all that we know, Penguin 3.0 impacted less than 1% of the English language queries. However, as with anything related to SEO, we can only take what we have and work ourselves out of the dark.

So, whenever big algorithmic changes are made, we gather every bit of information we can, then try to put the pieces together in order to understand what happened and what to expect next.

At my company, AWR, we have recently been performing some studies of our own on the impact of algorithm changes with the development of our latest Google Algorithm Changes tool.

2015 Year In Review: A Look Back On What Happened With SEO

Every year, we say how much has changed in the industry – and every year, we’re right.

It never ceases to  amaze me how much SEO constantly refines itself to more sophisticated Google guidelines and smarter, savvier searchers. Think about it: Since 2011, Moz has counted more than 83 major algorithm updates to the search engine giant.

That’s 83 times we’ve had to change our tactics in three years! Can you think of any other industry that has gone through that much fluctuation? Unlikely.

So, as part of the end-of-year trends, let’s take a look back on everything that went down this in 2015.

How Much Traffic Will You Lose From The Upcoming Mobile SEO-Pocalypse?

April 21st is coming, and if you haven’t done it already, you should really get your mobile ducks in a row.

For most of us, mobile compliance is no longer optional. At SMX West this month, Mitul Gandhi of seo Clarity reported that mobile search currently makes up about 30% of total traffic, regardless of industry. For some of us, it’s more than half of all search traffic and growing by the moment.

Making your site mobile-friendly is necessary in the present for many sites, and it’s a good long-term investment even if it doesn’t affect your short-term traffic.

What if you’re in an industry where far less than 30% of your traffic comes from mobile devices? Should it still be a priority to make your site mobile friendly? Would you really lose that much traffic if you didn’t?

Google Says It Is Working On Improving App Discovery Within Web Search

Mariya Moeva, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, said at SMX West during the “Search Inside The App” panel on Wednesday that Google is working on ways to improve app discovery within standard web and mobile web search.

Mariya, who is actively working with the team on App Indexing, which was just added as a mobile ranking signal said that after being asked about the challenge of implementing App Indexing simply because it only currently works if the searcher has the app installed.

Google’s Mariya Moeva said that they are looking into ways to improve app discovery through App Indexing in web search, as a way to help searchers discover helpful content within apps that they do not yet have installed.

Currently, through App Indexing, searchers on Android devices can discover content within their existing apps, if the app has used Google’s App Indexing protocol. Google would display a link in the mobile search results that instead of taking them to a web page, would take them into the app at the content point that is relevant.