Google Algorithm Change History - 2012 Updates

 Google Algorithm Change History -  2012 Updates

Panda 3.9.2 — September 18, 2012

Google rolled out another Panda refresh, which appears to have been data-only. Ranking flux was moderate but not on par with a large-scale algorithm update.

Panda 3.9.1 — August 20, 2012

Google rolled out yet another Panda data update, but the impact seemed to be fairly small. Since the Panda 3.0 series ran out of numbers at 3.9, the new update was dubbed 3.9.1.


7-Result SERPs — August 14, 2012

Google made a significant change to the Top 10, limiting it to 7 results for many queries. Our research showed that this change rolled out over a couple of days, finally impacting about 18% of the keywords we tracked.


DMCA Penalty — August 10, 2012

Google announced that they would start penalizing sites with repeat copyright violations, probably via DMCA takedown


June/July 86-Pack — August 10, 2012

After a summer hiatus, the June and July Search Quality Highlights were rolled out in one mega-post. Major updates included Panda data and algorithm refreshes, an improved rank-ordering function (?), a ranking boost for "trusted sources", and changes to site clustering.


Panda 3.9 — July 24, 2012

A month after Panda 3.8, Google rolled out a new Panda update. Rankings fluctuated for 5-6 days, although no single day was high enough to stand out. Google claimed ~1% of queries were impacted.


Link Warnings — July 19, 2012
In a repeat of March/April, Google sent out a large number of unnatural link warnings via Google Webmaster Tools. In a complete turn-around, they then announced that these new warnings may not actually represent a serious problem.


Panda 3.8 — June 25, 2012

Google rolled out another Panda data refresh, but this appeared to be data only (no algorithm changes) and had a much smaller impact than Panda 3.7.


Panda 3.7 — June 8, 2012

Google rolled out yet another Panda data update, claiming that less than 1% of queries were affect. Ranking fluctuation data suggested that the impact was substantially higher than previous Panda updates (3.5, 3.6).


May 39-Pack — June 7, 2012

Google released their monthly Search Highlights, with 39 updates in May. Major changes included Penguin improvements, better link-scheme detection, changes to title/snippet rewriting, and updates to Google News.

Penguin 1.1 — May 25, 2012

Google rolled out its first targeted data update after the "Penguin" algorithm update. This confirmed that Penguin data was being processed outside of the main search index, much like Panda data.

Knowledge Graph — May 16, 2012

In a major step toward semantic search, Google started rolling out "Knowledge Graph", a SERP-integrated display providing supplemental object about certain people, places, and things. Expect to see "knowledge panels" appear on more and more SERPs over time. Also, Danny Sullivan's favorite Trek is ST:Voyager?!

April 52-Pack — May 4, 2012

Google published details of 52 updates in April, including changes that were tied to the "Penguin" update. Other highlights included a 15% larger "base" index, improved pagination handling, and a number of updates to sitelinks.

Panda 3.6 — April 27, 2012

Barely a week after Panda 3.5, Google rolled out yet another Panda data update. The implications of this update were unclear, and it seemed that the impact was relatively small.

Penguin — April 24, 2012

After weeks of speculation about an "Over-optimization penalty", Google finally rolled out the "Webspam Update", which was soon after dubbed "Penguin." Penguin adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing, and impacted an estimated 3.1% of English queries.

Panda 3.5 — April 19, 2012

In the middle of a busy week for the algorthim, Google quietly rolled out a Panda data update. A mix of changes made the impact difficult to measure, but this appears to have been a fairly routine update with minimal impact.

Parked Domain Bug — April 16, 2012

After a number of webmasters reported ranking shuffles, Google confirmed that a data error had caused some domains to be mistakenly treated as parked domains (and thereby devalued). This was not an intentional algorithm change.

March 50-Pack — April 3, 2012

Google posted another batch of update highlights, covering 50 changes in March. These included confirmation of Panda 3.4, changes to anchor-text "scoring", updates to image search, and changes to how queries with local intent are interpreted.

Panda 3.4 — March 23, 2012

Google announced another Panda update, this time via Twitter as the update was rolling out. Their public statements estimated that Panda 3.4 impacted about 1.6% of search results.

Search Quality Video — March 12, 2012

This wasn't an algorithm update, but Google published a rare peek into a search quality meeting. For anyone interested in the algorithm, the video provides a lot of context to both Google's process and their priorities. It's also a chance to see Amit Singhal in action.

Panda 3.3 — February 27, 2012

Google rolled out another post-"flux" Panda update, which appeared to be relatively minor. This came just 3 days after the 1-year anniversary of Panda, an unprecedented lifespan for a named update.


February 40-Pack (2) — February 27, 2012

Google published a second set of "search quality highlights" at the end of the month, claiming more than 40 changes in February. Notable changes included multiple image-search updates, multiple freshness updates (including phasing out 2 old bits of the algorithm), and a Panda update.

Venice — February 27, 2012

As part of their monthly update, Google mentioned code-name "Venice". This local update appeared to more aggressively localize organic results and more tightly integrate local search data. The exact roll-out date was unclear.

February 17-Pack — February 3, 2012

Google released another round of "search quality highlights" (17 in all). Many related to speed, freshness, and spell-checking, but one major announcement was tighter integration of Panda into the main search index.

Ads Above The Fold — January 19, 2012

Google updated their page layout algorithms to devalue sites with too much ad-space above the "fold". It was previously suspected that a similar factor was in play in Panda. The update had no official name, although it was referenced as "Top Heavy" by some SEOs.

Panda 3.2 — January 18, 2012

Google confirmed a Panda data update, although suggested that the algorithm hadn't changed. It was unclear how this fit into the "Panda Flux" scheme of more frequent data updates.

Search + Your World — January 10, 2012

Google announced a radical shift in personalization - aggressively pushing Google+ social data and user profiles into SERPs. Google also added a new, prominent toggle button to shut off personalization.

January 30-Pack — January 5, 2012

Google announced 30 changes over the previous month, including image search landing-page quality detection, more relevant site-links, more rich snippets, and related-query improvements. The line between an "algo update" and a "feature" got a bit more blurred.

Google’s Latest Penguin & Panda Updates

Google changes its algorithm about 500 times a year.  Most changes are so minor that they are not even noticeable.  But every few months, an update comes along that has a major impact on the ranking results of many websites.  These big updates, usually named after black and white animals, make webmasters uneasy and keep them wondering what is going to happen next.

Google’s two most recent algorithm changes are the Panda and the Penguin.  Typically the search engine pushes out algorithm updates for each about once a month.

The Panda was first released in February 2011, and there have been about 13 data refreshes of it since then.  The update aims to promote high quality content sites by cracking down on sites with low quality content, specifically thin, stolen or duplicate quality as well as sites with a high ad-to-content ratio.  It has reportedly affected the rankings of almost 12% of all search results.

To prevent their sites from being affected by the Panda, one of the first things that many webmasters and SEOs did was separate out low quality content.  Instead of stealing articles and posting auto-generated content, they have focused on creating unique content.  They have also evened out their ad-to-content ratio so that their sites are not filled with overwhelming amounts of cheap ads.

The Panda was most recently refreshed on June 25 and this was announced by Google in a tweet.  They said there were no updates to the algorithm or changes in the signals.  It was simply a basic data refresh where the algorithm was run again.

The Penguin was first released in April 2012 with the intention of reducing web spam and promoting high quality content in search results.  It has cracked down on sites that violate Google’s quality guidelines by creating or supporting spam to increase their rankings in search engines.  This includes using unnatural links, keyword stuffing and content spinning.  It is said that the update has impacted about 3.1% of web queries, particularly those with unnatural links.

In an effort to make Google happy and avoid being affected by the Penguin update, webmasters have recently worked harder to gather quality links, utilize social media and create better content.  They have also been more careful with keyword stuffing, making sure not to go overboard with keywords or overload meta tags, heading and body copy so much that they are hard for people to read.

The most recent Penguin update was released over Memorial Day weekend. 

The update is not an actual change to the Penguin algorithm, but a data refresh. Matt Cutts defines this as a small refresh of data within the existing algorithm.  It has affected less than 0.1% of all English searches, so few websites are being impacted.

Why Your Website Get Penalized by Google Penguin Update?

On April 24^th Matt Cutts, the head in charge of webspam team at google announced that there will be another algorithm change to the google search engine and it will be named as google PENGUIN update.

Oh wait I said google search engine; yes my friend google again updated its self. But again the same question arises as it came last year during panda update. Why there was a need of a new algorithm? While the same simple answer to reduce or nullify the webspams and to make google SERP better.

To quote Matt’s words:

“The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content.”

That’s the bad news for only those who use to spam google and make their blog on high SERP with specially use of black hat techniques. Black hat hummmm I don’t know whether you know about this, or not but still to explain you,
BLACK HAT SEO- this is an illegal activity which is done by most of the bloggers this technique just make any one blogs reputation up by awfully activities. Mostly it consists of keyword confusion games which mean wrong keyword stuffing, getting indexed within seconds and many more.

Yes that’s true for few days or forever this black hat techniques are stopped due to update. But again same thing goes as black hat peoples cracked panda update, there is maximum probability that they will crack down  google penguin update and remove more technique to recover them self but I personally suggest you that if you are blogging to make money wait for few days and just belief on your hard work.

If you have started getting low search engine traffic it’s most likely that your website has penalized by google for not following guidelines of google.

As last time when Panda update took place in February 2011, the chief goal of that date was to penalize those site’s which contain poor quality content, site’s whose content doesn’t match with query. As it was a high profile update it affected the web spammers largely.

Every blogger and website owners should keep in mind that google is tracking your each and every moves. Google always tweak search engine algorithms because it’s the company which has multi bullion dollar a year business and it’s their responsibility that they make accurate and quality search result.

Mutt Cutt even says

“Google just wants to provide Search result which will enhance the experience of the users”

How Google Serves up Results to Users

Google works hard to make its search result better. Its working is quite simple it’s like a filter which filters the website according to your query. There is lots of website which contain the words which you input in search box but google knows that you won’t like to crawl on 100s of site but a user want what he wants. So the billion dollar company always works hard to make it better and valuable in minds of people.

 

How will google penguin update affect your sites?

For starters if you have created and maintained with solid and original with quality content articles which has been organically rising up the ranking then you won’t have much to worry.

By saying organically means the article you wrote where ranked in google and was indexed by search engine and steadily your page ranking and alexa ranking was increasing.

But if you have tried to fool google by use of short cuts and tried to rank you website above higher quality content websites with poor content, by using black hat techniques. Then there will be subsequent decrease in google page rank and traffic in few coming months.

Following are few things which would make a website to penalize.

Unnatural and excessive back-linking

You might know about Akismet Plugin if you are using wordpress, just go to administration panel of this plugin and watch out how much garbage your Akismet filters out of your comment area.

All those spam are comment are from people or from automated robots which leave comments with links going back to their site in the hope of that they will get one backlink. Sometimes that spammer cross the limit as their comment don’t even relate with the article. One more technique which spammers adopt is create an account in any famous fourm and post links of their website which is an illegal process giving the person lots of traffic and good quality backlinks. This things where previously building huge number of backlink and also increase search engine traffic. This type of tactics is now targeted more readily by google and this will be largely addressed I google penguin update.

Poorly written article which doesn’t make any sense because of worse grammar

In the effort of making any website full of content in a very short time period some people use what are known as article spinners. That is they start to recycle existing content which are already on other websites. This type of thing is an illegal activity which makes a blog without the new and fresh information and overall there is nothing new of yours. This thing is been seen by google and google is targeting such website which use article spinners and span over all SERP.

Keyword stuffing

Some of the spammers do this type of activity which refers of using unnatural placements of keyword in content. The keywords are those which rank better in SERP and when you actually read the content on website it doesn’t make any sense but its only stuffed with lots of keywords.

There is lot more things in black hat technique but this are on the top list which makes a blog to Get Penalized by Google Penguin Update.

In future when your blog will be in surveillance of google may get penalize due to such activity which you use to make you website famous in SERP. The only way to rescue from penguin beaks is to only perform White Hat SEO techniques and nothing else. If you have already harmed by penguin update then just leave a comment I will try my best to help you out.

What You Should Do To Continue Ranking After The Panda Update?

In order to rank your website after the Panda update, you have to adjust your link building strategy. Google has very specific demands about what they are looking for. They have proven that they are more than willing to make some very serious decisions when it comes to link building. Just recently, right before the panda update was released, Google infiltrated a variety of different public blog networks and completely de-indexed all of the websites that were members of these networks. This took a lot of webmasters by surprise and a completely tanked the rankings of even some big brand websites on the Internet.

Google wants to see webmasters writing unique, credible content for their websites and only engaging in white hat link building practices. In order to ensure that people on the Internet are complying to this, they are making big decisions that are having drastic impacts on the SEO world. In order for your website to continue ranking after the panda update, you need to comply your link building efforts with what Google is looking for.

Diversify your Anchor Text

Diversifying your anchor text for your backlinks has become more important after Panda. The anchor text is the keywords that you use when you link to your website from other websites. Previous to this, a lot of link builders said that using your specific keywords as the anchor text for your links was something you should do 90 to 100% of the time when linking to your website. Google completely shot down this belief by substantially decreasing the rankings of websites that had links with just a small number of anchor texts. This has concluded that by diversifying your anchor text you can continue to rank your websites just as you always have been. Good anchor text diversification means that you are using lots of generic phrases, raw URLs and your actual keywords for only a small percentage of the time.

Build White Hat Links

Building high-quality links through proven and effective methods like guest posting is the best way to build your rank on search engines. Google and other search engines are looking for webmasters that engage in high quality link building practices like getting blog posts published on niche related websites. You can do this by writing to blog owners and asking them if you can submit a guest post on their site. Upon approval, you can then write up a unique and informative article and include a link back to your website within the content. These are extremely valuable links because the websites that are allowing guest posts will probably be around for many years. Additionally, sites that accept guest posts usually have very high page rank and are ran by credible owners. These are the type of people that you want to obtain links from because they care about their websites and they will continue to run them positively in the future.

Buy Aged Domains

The age of your domain is also important for ranking on search engines, post Panda. It is always been believed that domains that have been online for many years and never dropped by the domain registrar are much more valuable than domains that were recently registered. The panda update has stressed the importance of aged domains and proven that a quality aged domain is extremely valuable.

Charles Dodgson works as a content strategist for WL Marketing SEO service company that offers quality link building services and affordable search engine marketing solutions to meet the web promotion requirements of businesses and professionals.

SEO Lingo Defined

While there are plenty of great articles on the Search Engine Journal website that dissect current SEO best practices and provide excellent recommendations to current webmasters, all the advice in the world won’t make a difference in your website’s success if you don’t understand the terminology that’s being used in the first place!
So if you’re a new webmaster, don’t feel overwhelmed!

Use the following list of SEO lingo to get up to speed or as reference material whenever you encounter a word you don’t understand:

URL – A “URL” (or uniform resource locator) refers to the specific string of characters that lead to an internet resource.  In most cases, the word URL is used to describe the letter-based web addressed entered into a browser in order to access a web page.

TLD – “TLD” stands for top-level domain and refers to the extension of a given web address.  The most popular TLDs from an SEO perspective include .com, .org and .net, although dozens of other industry/country-specific options are available as well.

SEO / SEM / PPC – Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the on-page and off-page activities designed to help a website appear more prominently in the natural search results, while pay-per-click advertising (PPC) involves bidding for high placements within the sponsored search results provided by the search engines.  Search engine marketing (SEM) incorporates both of these techniques to refer to a website’s overall promotional plan.

Links – A link (or backlink) is a connection between two websites that is built using HTML code and enables visitors to move between different web pages.

    Outbound Links – Outbound links refer to those specific backlinks which point away from a site and direct visitors to a page on a different website.
    Internal Links – Internal links are those backlinks that point between pages on a single website.  Internal links can be used contextually within articles, as well as in the navigation structure of a site.
    Anchor Text – Anchor text refers to the “clickable” link of an HTML backlink – not the code that enables the link action to occur.  Anchor text is often used by the search engines to measure link and content relevance.
    Link Building – Because the quality and quantity of backlinks plays an important role in SEO, link building – or, the process of acquiring more outbound links from other sites – is a big priority for most webmasters.
    Link Profile – A site’s link profile refers to the collection of outbound links from other sites that are pointing in to the site in question.  The quality of a site’s link profile can vary widely, according to a number of different parameters.
    Link Juice – “Link juice” refers to the authority that is transmitted from one site to another through a backlink, in accordance with Google’s PageRank measurement system and algorithms.
    No-Follow / Do-Follow – No-follow and  do-follow are specific tags webmasters can add to their links to control which links transmit link juice to their link partners and which links reserve this authority for themselves.
    Footer Links – Footer links are those links that appear in the bottom section (or “footer”) of a website.
    Link Bait – Link bait is intentionally provocative content that’s disseminated to encourage viral sharing and result in more backlinks than usual pointing at a site.
    Guest Posting – Guest posting is a popular link building tactic that involves developing content for other websites in exchange for a backlink pointing at your own pages.

Social Signals – Social signals are any factors that demonstrate authority and influence on popular social networking websites.  A few examples include a person’s number of Facebook followers, how frequently his Twitter updates are re-tweeted and the number of times articles on his site are shared across the most popular social media sites.

Optimization – “Optimization” refers to the process of intentionally manipulating website content in order to secure higher rankings within the natural search results pages.

White Hat / Grey Hat / Black Hat – These three terms refer to the acceptability of various optimization techniques.  “White hat” techniques are wholesome, search engine approved tactics, “black hat” techniques are those that intentionally mislead or subvert the search engines’ indexation processes (and that could lead to future penalties if discovered), and “grey hat” techniques are those that fall into the grey area between acceptable and unacceptable.

Organic Search Results / SERP – A search engine results page (SERP) is the specific set of website listings that appear whenever a user enters a search query into Google, Bing, Yahoo or any of the other lower-tier search engines.  To secure maximum traffic and exposure, most webmasters use SEO in order to have their websites appear in the Top 10 results on any given SERP.

    Blended / Universal SERPs – Though past search results pages were composed entirely of links to text-based web pages, the current Google SERPs now contain links to video results, image results, shopping results and more – leading to what is now known as the “blended” or “universal” SERPs.
    Personalized SERPs – Personalized SERPs refer to search results pages that incorporate a user’s personal preferences and relationships (typically pulled from his Google profile) to create a custom results listing page.

Algorithm / Algo – Each of the search engines maintain their own algorithms, which are the sets of calculations that weigh different factors in order to automatically determine which websites should be displayed in the SERPs.  Algorithms (frequently abbreviated in the SEO world as “algos”) are constantly being updated, which makes it important for webmasters to stay on top of SEO industry news.

Search Engine Spider / Crawling / Robots – In order to display your website in the SERPs, the search engines must first capture the content that’s stored on your site in order to determine what it’s related to and how it should be ranked – a process that’s referred to as “indexing” or “crawling.”  To accomplish this task, the search engines use automated programs known as “spiders” or “robots” to assess and index the text-based content on your website.

Indexability – Many commonly-used website enhancements (including images, Flash animations and Javascript codes) can prevent the search engine spiders from indexing a website properly.  Indexability refers to how well these programs can understand your website, as well as the presence of any website elements that might prevent proper indexation.

Keyword / Keyword Phrase – Keywords and keyword phrases are the specific combinations of words that users enter into the search engines.  Because having your site appear for specific keyword SERPs results in a number of different website advantages, webmasters must invest time into keyword research to find the exact keyword combinations to target with their sites, based on the overall search volume each keyword receives and how competitive its SERP is.

Keyword Stuffing – Keyword stuffing refers to the process of incorporating target keywords into website content or code sections in order to increase rankings.  Many specific keyword stuffing methods (for example, stuffing the meta keywords tag or CSS pages) have been detected and accounted for in the search algorithms.  For this reason, it’s best to focus on providing quality content to readers, instead of optimizing website text to a specific keyword density.

PageRank (PR) – PageRank is a value assigned to every web page in the Google index, based on the page’s relative merit.  A number of different factors contribute to a page’s PR, including site age, number of inbound links, inbound link quality and more.  Though actual PageRank is constantly being updated by Google’s algorithm, these calculations are not made public.  Instead, the PageRank scores pushed out to PR measurement tools are known as “Toolbar PageRank” and represent only a general approximation of a page’s actual PR.

Navigation / Site Architecture – A website’s navigation structure or site architecture refers to the specific way its pages are set up.  For best results, it’s important to use a “wide” navigation structure (in which every page on your site can be reached within three clicks) instead of a “deep” architecture.

Analytics – Website analytics refers to the process of tracking website usage data and analyzing relevant metrics to determine how well a website is performing.  Google Analytics is the program used most frequently for this pursuit, though there are several other options for obtaining website data.  The following are a few specific metrics that can be tracked through website analytics programs:

    Bounce Rate – A “bounce” is recorded whenever a visitor lands on your website and leaves without clicking on a link to view another page.  In general, a bounce rate under 50% is considered ideal (and may play a role in how well your site ranks in the SERPs).
    Page Views / Impressions – Page views or impressions indicates the number of times each of your website pages is viewed, as well as the number of pages each of your visitors takes in while on your site.  “Average views per visit” is a commonly-tracked website metric, with higher average views demonstrating a more engaged audience.
    Conversions – A conversion occurs whenever a visitor on your website takes the specific action you desire, which could be purchasing a product, opting-in to your email newsletter or viewing an embedded video on your site.  Having a conversion rate optimization plan in place to increase your total number of conversions is an important part of maximizing your website’s success.

Usability – Compared to site indexability, usability refers to how easy it is for people to engage with your website.  Site design, browser compatibility, disability enhancements and other features all play a role in improving usability and making your site accessible for as many people as possible.

HTML Tags – HTML tags represent specific website code elements that can be manipulated in order to improve a site’s SEO.

    Meta keywords – The meta keywords tag is a specific tag that can be added to the “head” section of an HTML document.  Although this tag was originally intended to inform the search engine spiders on a website’s topic, its past abuse through keyword stuffing means that it is no longer weighted in most search engine algorithms and can therefore be disregarded.
    Meta description – Meta description tags allow users to provide a description of each page’s content in the “head” section.  This content is not used in the SEO algorithms, but is often displayed as part of the “snippet” that appears in the search results.  To encourage clickthroughs from the SERPs, make this description engaging and include a call to action.
    Page title – A web page’s title appears at the top of the browser window whenever the page is opened and does play a role in a page’s SEO score.  Incorporate your target keyword here and – for best results – keep your total title between 60-70 characters.
    Image ALT – Image ALT tags are used to provide a description of each image on your site that can be interpreted by visually impaired visitors using adapted technology.  Incorporating your target keyword here may convey a small SEO benefit, but it’s important to avoid keyword stuffing and include your chosen keywords only if you can do so in a natural, valuable way.
    Headline – Headline tags (including h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6 tags) allow you to separate your website text into sections.  Headline tags should be used naturally and should incorporate your target keywords where relevant, as doing so may provide a small SEO benefit.

Google Panda – Google Panda is a major Google algorithm update which was initially rolled out in February 2011 (though several subsequent updates have occurred since then).  The stated goal of Google Panda was to rid the SERPs of the low-value content provided by sites deemed to be “content farms.”

Google Penguin – Google Penguin is a more recent algorithm update (initially launched in April 2012) that was designed to penalized over-optimized sites.  Specific factors that may have implicated over-optimized sites include low-quality backlinks, keyword stuffing and consistent evidence of on-page optimization schemes.

CTR – “CTR” stands for clickthrough rate and indicates the percentage of visitors that click on a given link out of the total impressions the link receives.  This metric is used in a number of different circumstances, including the total clicks a PPC ad receives compared to its total views and the number of times an in-article link on a website is clicked compared to the site’s total number of visitors.

Penalties – Search engine penalties may be assessed to discourage webmasters from acting in ways that violate the search engines’ terms of service.  Penalties may be manually assessed on a site-by-site basis, or they may occur automatically as a result of algorithm changes.  Penalties can be temporary or permanent in nature, and they can be assessed in various degrees of severity, from a loss in SERPs rankings to total removal from an engine’s index.

Webmaster Tools – Google’s Webmaster Tools page offers website owners a number of helpful features, including the ability to monitor sites for indexing errors and site speed.  These pages are also used to communicate penalty notifications to webmasters, when appropriate.

Google Dance – The “Google Dance” refers to the variability in SERPs rankings that occur whenever a new web page is added to the Google index or whenever new link building campaigns are carried out.  The specific rankings of these new pages may vary by as many as 300-800 positions in the SERPs as Google determines where exactly the page should fall, with the process typically leveling off within a few weeks.

Google Sandbox – The “Google Sandbox” is an often-hypothesized, never-confirmed phenomenon that prevents new websites from seeing the full benefit of their optimization efforts within the first few months of their lives.  Typically, this effect is witnessed most often with young sites targeting competitive keywords and can only be overcome when the site surpasses Google’strust barrier.

Landing Page – A landing page refers to the first page a new visitor sees when he arrives on your website.  Any page on your site can be a landing page for traffic from various sources, although the specific term “landing page” is often used to refer to specially-designed pages that are constructed to encourage new visitors to take a specific action right away.

Opt-in Form / Email Marketing – Email marketing is the process of capturing visitor email addresses for future solicitations, which is carried out through the use of opt-in forms.  These forms enable specific pieces of information (for example, visitor name and email address) to be automatically added to list management software for future follow-up and can be optimized to increase sign-ups in a number of different ways.

Microdata / Rich Snippets – Microdata is a method approved by Google, Bing and Yahoo for adding extra information to the HTML of a website for use in indexing by the search engine spiders.  The information captured by microdata (as described on the Schema.org website) may be displayed in the SERPs, resulting in an enhanced listing known as a “rich snippet.”

Split Testing – Split testing refers to the process of producing multiple variations of a web page and displaying them randomly to website visitors in order to determine which specific combination of elements is most effective at increasing conversions.  Split testing can be carried out using the A/B format (in which only two versions testing a single element are displayed) or conducted as multivariate tests, in which several variables are tested at once).

Source:-http://www.searchenginejournal.com/learn-seo-lingo-defined/43799/

Google Targeted Webspam in Search Results through its Recent Launch “Penguin Update”.

With its recent updates and changes in its Algorithm, Google is back on the spotlight. This has led to a lot of tension on the internet. However, these changes have impacted many websites either positively or negatively. One of its recent changes is creating an update which is aimed to target webspam. In the past years, Google has faced a lot of challenges due to webspam which continue to grow each day. Webmasters and bloggers are now in pain only months after Google released the Panda update. Well, the Penguin update has brought a lot of changes to many websites. There are some sites that do not follow Google quality guidelines and that is the reason why Google is so determined to get rid of them. Penguin update is mainly aimed to get rid of sites that have spammy content. Since the introduction of penguin update, approximately 3% of search engine results. Just like its friend Panda update, Penguin update gets rid of sites that lack originality. However, this recent Google update has been of great help to so many website owners who for quite a long time have tried to receive higher rankings. Most website owners have complained that penguin update has had some major effects on their sites. Some of the effects include:

*providing spam notices.

*Sending automated questions to Google.

* Get rid of websites that have no content.

*Black hat SEO techniques used.

 

                                                                                                                                      

So, have you been looking for the perfect way to receive higher rankings? It is not a bad idea to use Penguin update if you want to increase your website ranking. If your site has already been affected by Google Penguin you need to stick to the below guidelines and survive it:

*Never use cheap SEO on your site

This is a grave mistake that many website owners make. When you use cheap SEO there is a likelihood that you site will be affected by black hat search engine optimization. This will give poor link building services and this will affect your site severely.

*Avoid affiliate marketing

If you want your site to eliminate poor content and spammy result you need to avoid using affiliate marketing until you have good content. Ensure that your blogs are original.

*Avoid duplicate content

Using duplicate content on your site will result to grave danger. To get rid of duplicated content you can use Google webmaster tools and alert Google.

Source:-http://www.softtrix.com/blog/tag/how-to-recover-from-googles-penguin-update/