According to a new post of Google’s blog today, it announced a change to its search algorithm that the company says will impact 35% of Web searches.
The change builds on top of its previous “Caffeine” update in order to deliver more up-to-date and relevant search results, specifically those in areas where freshness matters. This includes things like recent events, breaking news and hot topics.
Here is the full blog post:
Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.
If I search for [olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics (the only time my favorite sport, cricket, was played). Google Search uses a freshness algorithm, designed to give you the most up-to-date results, so even when I just type [olympics] without specifying 2012, I still find what I’m looking for.
Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.
We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.
- Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.
- Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.
- Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.
There are plenty of cases where results that are a few years old might still be useful for you. [fast tomato sauce recipe] certainly saved me after a call from my wife reminded me I had volunteered to make dinner! On the other hand, when I search for the [49ers score], a result that is a week old might be too old.
Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.
I think this is a great idea that google will be searching more trending topics and the latest news instead of bringing up items that are not so modern. It will encourage people to blog more and to keep their websites up to date.
Thanks for sharing!
google is making lots of public-facing changes.
one change is they are moving ads to the bottom of the serp. they get more clicks that way.
so counter to what we might assume, users do move beyond search result no. 1.
how else could they click links at the bottom of the page? maybe users just confuse the ads at the bottom as part of the search results?
the crawlable web is not that big. not for today’s cpus and ram. not for google. most new content is garbage, seo and similar. most new sites are garbage. to keep this index “updated” is no major feat. with advances in storage a user can store more of the crawlable web on his own media than he’ll ever be able to consume in his lifetime.
google has an interest in encouraging creation of new content. they must justify their own existence as keeper of a slowly expanding cache of mostly garbage. a cache that anyone can replicate. hello bing. (it’s not google’s fault that content is garbage, but they might be able to incentivise better content if they put their minds to it. they have a lot of control in this regard.)
whether the “fresh” content they are going to feature in the serp’s will be worth users’ time, and not simply fluff to grab eyeballs for advertising bucks, is another matter.
Google will become an “old” man in few years as it has many failed ideas and projects already.Google’s downfall will be its attempts to be monopoly. Many companies and people have lost interest in Google already due to its GREED. The market will be divided between many other search,social and NEW models. Google and Facebook will deminish in less than 4 years.
agree, but google has more than a little bit of critical mass.
even if their user base leaves them high and dry, they’ve got heaps of cash.
they are like microsoft.
they might become obsolete, but won’t just disappear.
facebook is another story. pure hype. the people now running that company do not have a clue, technology-wise. it could implode quickly.
Whatever google has changed but my site is on first page for different high competing keywords.
They just like keeping us on our toes!
Can’t say it’s a bad thing what they are doing and hopefully it will clear out some of the poor content they have from within their search.
I noticed on the Google patents page that they had recently added a new patent indicating a new focus on indexing for updated content. Makes a lot of sense that they would seek to do this. People do want relevant now, not relevant 2 months ago.
Google said it was going to split commercial searches vs research searches. One of my websites appears page 2 on a search with quotes, but can’t be found on a search without quotes. Google said it was going to compare data on semantics and stats to determine, is it a commercial search where the user wants to shop? Or is it a research search, where he wants info?
No, it’s still page 2. It got shuffled (haven’t updated it).
Google said it is going to determine what constitute commercial searches vs research searches.
Google owes a big debt to SEO industry. As firms took advantage of Google free data on keywords, Google studied them and has now applied its principles:
Introducing Dynamic Search Ads (beta)
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/10/introducing-dynamic-search-ads-beta.html
Besides block keywords to webmasters via encrypted search, Google is making the keyword analytics data priority to its business agenda.
Keyword “Not Provided” By Google Spikes, Now 7-14% In Cases
http://searchengineland.com/encrypted-search-terms-hit-google-analytics-99685
I don’t know how this relates to the changes mentioned in this article, but I must say that I’m finding search engines more and more difficult to use for academic purposes. When my middle school students search, even with my help, most of the content is commercially oriented or very unreliable. I used to discourage Wikipedia, but now I find it’s often the best place to start. At least you can look at the citations and find other reliable sites. Am I crazy, or was there a time in the not too distant past when academically oriented sites were a significant percentage of the results of searches?