It is well known that Google works continuously to optimize its services on a regular basis. This implies adding occasionally adding minor and major updates to the Google algorithm that shake things up every now and then.
This makes it necessary for the SEO community to stay updated with the updates and the effects of the same. 2018 was no exception to this.
There were a number of significant updates from Google in 2018 as well. Let’s take a quick look at the Google Algorithm Updates 2018.
Google Algorithms List
This core update was launched in March earlier this year. Many sites saw major volatility on the 3rd and 8th of March
With this update, Google would index the websites primarily according to their mobile versions.
In May, Google rolled back most of the snippets to the earlier limits (150-160 characters after testing longer snippets of 300+ characters.
Video thumbnails were replaced with a dedicated video carousel causing a major change in the results. With this, there was a significant increase in the number of SERPs with videos.
This update made page speed a ranking factor for mobile results. Google claimed that only the slowest of the websites were affected.
With effect from July 24, Chrome 68 started marking the non-HTTPS sites as “not secure.” This, however, relies on users installing the latest version of Chrome.
Google launched this “broad core algorithm” update in August 2018. The update took about a week to roll out completely and peaked at about 1-2 August. This update majorly affected the health and wellness verticals and YMYL sites (Your Money Your Life), although other verticals also saw some large-scale impact
Impact of Google Algorithm
Google always aims to improve the quality of its search results with each update that they roll out. Google Algorithm updates often cause websites to experience fluctuations in their traffic and their rankings.
Different algorithms have varying effects on ranking and SERPs. For instance, the mobile-first indexing update changed the primary indexing factor from the desktop version of a site to their mobile version.
The August Medic core update ranked pages with similar content according to the time when they were published.
For pages with content about the same topic, those which have been published the latest would rank higher.
This makes it necessary for website owners to keep updating the content on their pages to maintain their rankings.
All in all, this was a short summary of the major updates that Google rolled out in 2018. There are often a number of minor updates and also additions to the earlier updates.
To rank higher in the Google search results, it is necessary to stay updated with the latest updates and look out for the ones that might come up in the future.