The document discusses Google's search engine algorithm updates including Hummingbird, Pigeon, Panda, and Penguin. It provides details on what each update aims to accomplish and implications for businesses. Key points covered include Hummingbird focusing on search query meaning over individual words, Pigeon prioritizing larger websites for local search, Panda favoring high-quality pages with original content, and Penguin penalizing sites with bad link profiles and keyword-stuffed pages. The document advises businesses to focus on useful content, natural links, and avoiding over-optimization in light of the algorithm changes.

1. Lead Generation Websites: SEO News
Google’s Animals:
Three birds and a bear!
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info@leadgenerationwebsites.co.uk

2. Google’s Search Engine Updates
1. Hummingbird
2. Pigeon
3. Panda
4. Penguin
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3. 1. Hummingbird
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4. What is Google’s Hummingbird?
“Hummingbird” is the name of the new search engine
algorithm that Google introduced in August 2013
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5. What is Google’s Hummingbird?
Hummingbird designed to focus on the meaning behind a
search query rather than just look at each word discretely.
The idea is that the whole sentence or conversation or meaning
— is taken into account, rather than particular words.
The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather
than pages matching just a few words.
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6. What are the implications for business websites?
Hummingbird is the Google search engine entirely rebuilt.
There was little noticeable effect on the search engine results.
Ultimately nothing has changed – it’s still about useful, relevant
content and good user experience – the engine has just got better
at identifying meaning in queries and the best pages which
answer it.
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7. 2. Google Pigeon
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8. What is Google Pigeon?
Google released its Pigeon algorithm update to make local
search results more useful and relevant by tying local search
results more closely to traditional web search signals.
As far as we know this update has only been released in
Google US and not hit the UK yet.
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9. What is the effect of Pigeon?
Pigeon appears to have favoured larger websites in the US.
This means that smaller businesses need a strong branded
domain to compete with larger well-known brands.
Location is ever more important. Whilst you cannot do much
to change the location of your business you can make sure
that Google knows your location through use of Google My
Business and schema address mark-up on your website.
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10. 3. Google Panda
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11. What is Google Panda?
Google Panda is a quality content filter which looks at;
1. Quality, length and relevance of on-page content
2. Usefulness and originality of that content
3. User-experience in terms of interactive content & ads
4. Original, experience-enhancing images
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12. What should you do?
Research suggests that the filter favours pages with 1500+ words,
original images and embedded video
Content should not be copied – original and useful
Put best content ‘above the fold’ with no ads
Use interactive content – maps and videos
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13. 4. Google Penguin
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14. What is Google Penguin?
Penguin demotes sites with bad link profiles and
promotes sites that were affected by previous Penguin
updates that cleaned up their link profiles.
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15. Implications for business owners?
What is a bad link profile?
A bad link profile is when a website has incoming links
from low-quality or irrelevant websites.
Low-quality is defined as a website with ‘thin’ content –
it has few pages, offers no value to readers and has low
Trust Flow probably due to a spammy link profile.
An irrelevant website is defined as one from an unrelated
niche – getting a link from a carpet cleaning website for
your shoe repair business website is an example.
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16. How does Google Penguin affect websites?
Bad link profile – anchor-text ratio
Another major aspect of Penguin is the anchor-text ratio.
If you have 1000 links to your shoe repair site and 500 of
them link with the text ‘shoe repair London’ then you
have an anchor-text ratio of 50% for that single phrase.
This is a sign of manipulation – it is unlikely that any site
would naturally get 50% of all links with the EXACT same
text...
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17. What should you do?
If you lost rankings and traffic suddenly in the middle of
October you need to check your link profile for anchor-text
ratio over-optimisation and for spammy links by
comparing your Citation Flow and Trust Flow metrics.
You should also check your on-page titles and copy for
‘keyword stuffing’ as over-optimisation of pages for
keyword phrases will also trip the Penguin filter.
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18. What should you do?
Change page titles to more readable, natural sentences.
Use related phrases and synonyms in your web page
copy if you have too many instances of a particular
keyword phrase.
Stop building links from low-quality sites.
Stop using keywords as anchor-text.
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19. What should you do?
If you have been affected it will be some time before you
can get out of the penalty – you have to wait until
Google runs the Penguin algorithm again.
Build links from related and relevant sites that have trust
and authority using your brand name and URL.
If you have many bad links you may need to submit a
disavow file to Google.
In certain cases the domain may need to be scrapped
and the website resurrected on a new domain!
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20. For more information;
call: 01708 208 889
Email: info@leadgenerationwebsites.co.uk