Google Updates for June & July 2012 - What they Mean for Search

Never standing still and trying its best to not be evil, Google has once again made significant updates to its search engine algorithm. In fact, there were over 86 in June & July alone! We've curated the six highest impact changes and rolled them up for you, Mexican style...

6 Updates That Require The Big Enchilada Approach:

Image CC by Kidmissile.

1. More Site Domination & Clustering

From Google
bergen. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] This is one of multiple projects that we're working on to make our system for clustering web results better and simpler.

We’ve seen site clustering and domination since 2010 but this change will most likely further solidify this concept. This means that just a few sites may be able to dominate the multiple search results. This update may potentially help brands and companies with reputation issues.

2. Better Positions for High-Quality Sites

From Google
JnBamboo. [project codename “Page Quality”] We’ve updated data for our Panda high-quality sites algorithm.

This algorithm will continue penalizing poor quality websites with shallow content from the search results. Remember those sites that only had a little bit of content and a ton of ads? This update will help Google distinguish spammy sites from good quality sites and rank accordingly.

Good, quality content is a must. Write content that is helpful for humans not search engines.

3. Personalized Predictions for Everyone

From Google
#75921. [project codename “Autocomplete”] For some time we've shown personalized predictions in Autocomplete for users who've enabled Web History on google.com in English. With this change, we're internationalizing the feature.

This update will show personalized results for users with enabled web history. This is a significant update for non-English speaking Google users.

4. Autocomplete Predictions, Even if You Don’t Want Them

From Google
Golden Eagle. [project codename “Autocomplete”] When Google Instant is turned off, we'll sometimes show a direct link to a site in the autocomplete predictions. With this change we refreshed the data for those predictions.

If you’re like me you don’t always want to see Google’s predictions. With this update, you may be served up predictions even when Google Instant is turned off.

5. Preference Towards High-Quality Content (2 Updates)

From Google
Bamse. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
Bamse-17L. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.

Just in case you haven’t heard it enough, I’m going to say it again - Google prefers high-quality, relevant content.

6. Panda Refresh

From Google
GreenLandII. [project codename “Page Quality”] We've incorporated new data into the Panda algorithm to better detect high-quality sites and pages.
#82353. [project codename “Page Quality”] This change refreshes data for the Panda high-quality sites algorithm.

Google not only prefers high-quality content but it also prefers good design, easy to navigate pages and websites that load quickly. Google wants the whole enchilada to be good! If you have great content but your website is very slow or has errors, be forewarned. You will probably be penalized.

Good visibility requires honest efforts. Make sure your whole enchilada looks good and tastes great!

Find the complete list of June & July Updates at The Official Google Search Blog - Inside Search.