Wojtek MazurLast year came and passed just like the years before, leaving behind a trail of significant algorithm updates and changes. Some of them were major and completely unexpected (removing authorship markups readily comes to mind); while many others were eagerly awaited and anticipated. One of such in particular is the Penguin 3.0 Update which was highly anticipated for over a year by many webmasters and SEOs wishing and hoping to recover from previous refreshes. However, it eventually turned out to have a much smaller impact than was actually expected. Another astonishing fact about the Penguin was Google’s claim of shifting this update from a manual refresh to a continuous formula.
From the already known Google “zoo crew” which we have become accustomed, to another animal- The Pigeon Update; 2014 did leave its mark as far as updates and algorithm refreshes are concerned. The Pigeon was initially released in July to the US version of Google, and then in December to other versions in the UK, Australia and Canada. The update significantly changed the pattern of ranking and also of the view of local search results.
Below you can find the complete timeline of all Google Updates which occurred in the past year, 2014, presented as a clear and succinct Infographic.
This infographic was orginally published on Elephate’s Blog
No matter the size and real importance, each time Google releases an update of their algorithms; it always becomes a subject of passionate discussion within the industry. This prompts me into an interesting consideration…
Aren’t we supposed to be focusing our time and efforts in keeping up the quality of our work and simply providing users with nothing short of a quality experience to be insured from any algorithm updates, rather than actively keeping track of updates and refreshes? Or has staying up-to-date with Google updates become a norm and essential activity in present times? I will be happy to find out your opinions from the comments below.
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