It’s a busy time for brands across the UK, many of which are affected heavily by seasonality and approaching the height of the Christmas period. Consequently, ‘no news is good news’ on the algorithm front, and stable SERPs may be in demand.
Fortunately, that appears to have been the case for the most part during the November period. By now, most brands are likely to have seen the impact of the September core algorithm update settle, while October’s spam update appears to have primarily targeted low-quality, spammy domains.
So, what’s new in November?
Rumours vs Reality
November kicked off with rumours of an algorithm update circulating the web. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable reported signs of an update through the 4th and 5th of November, as well as the 11th and 12th, and 18th through 20th, with plenty of chatter on forums to support the claim. The evidence seemed to suggest that there were some adjustments made to search, however this wasn’t confirmed by Google.
Additionally, these reports are not consistent with general trends the Fusion team has been seeing across client accounts, which could suggest that larger brands are unaffected to a certain extent.
Google’s Guide to Search Ranking Systems
The key SEO learning emerging from November is that Google has published a new document titled a guide to Google Search ranking systems. This document helpfully lays out which ranking systems are currently in use, and which have been retired. Google’s new guide also gives us some insight into how these systems are defined, how they are used, and what they mean for search.
Which Google Ranking Systems Are Currently in Use?
- BERT
- Crisis Information systems
- Deduplication systems
- Exact match domain system
- Freshness system
- Helpful content system
- Link analysis systems and PageRank
- Local news system
- MUM
- Neural matching
- Original content system
- Removal-based demotion system including legal removals and personal information removals
- Page experience system
- Passage ranking system
- Product reviews system
- RankBrain
- Reliable information systems
- Site diversity system
- Spam detection systems
Which Google Ranking Systems Have Been Retired?
- Hummingbird
- Mobile-friendly ranking system
- Page speed system
- Panda system
- Penguin system
- Secure site system
These were included in the document for historical purposes and have either been merged into successor systems or been integrated into Google’s core ranking factors.
What This Means for You
Google’s transparency here allows SEOs to better understand how these ranking systems work and how Google defines different ranking factors.
For SEOs, there’s no one key action to implement immediately. Instead, staying strong on the fundamentals is likely to be the key to success for brands throughout this period, and any gains made through link building, publishing content, and improving your technical infrastructure could position you well for the next core algorithm update, which we expect will roll out around the late January-February period.
We recommend taking a step back and asking yourself:
- Is my website strong on EAT fundamentals?
- Are there any blockers to page speed that I may have missed?
- Is my content publishing consistent in terms of quality and frequency?
Not sure how to implement these systems into your SEO strategy? Fusion Unlimited has the knowledge and experience needed to help – come and say hello.
by Jack Bell
