Google Algorithm Changes for December 2011
by Pat Marcello 
on Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 | 2 CommentsAh, yes, we’re in a new world of search — one where everything changes all the time. Oh, wait… That’s the OLD world of search, but the changes are coming more rapidly ever since our friend “Panda” came to town. It’s hard to keep up with all of it, but Google is doing a pretty good job of keeping webmasters informed, if they bother to look for the information. It’s all right there on Google’s Official Search Blog.
Image via Wikipedia
Here are the update highlights for December 2011:
- Parked domains will have less impact on search results. Google finds them to be full of ads without much value, and so you won’t see parked domains in your search results as much, which is fine with me. If you’re making money from parked domains, you may not feel the same.
- Making the blog index fresher. Yep… You read it here, Google is making the blog results more up to the minute and more comprehensive.
- Hmm… Just yesterday, I wrote about duplicate content, right? Today, I read how Google is doing better at… You guessed it … Determining which was the original page! That still means… only one page is counted, and so, dupe content will forever be bogus, and on your own site, it will still probably be a peck of death.
- Fresher images. They’re making images more recent, more prominent, too.
- “Top result selection code rewrite.” Remember how people used to brag about having several search results on a page? Well, that’s not going to happen anymore. They’re now going to make sure that not too many results come from the same website.
- Plus More comprehensive indexing, More autocomplete predictions, Live results for Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League, and others that I didn’t find all that interesting.
You can read the full article at Search quality highlights: new monthly series on algorithm changes, if you want to learn more.
Happy Search December! Is it time to rethink everything? Hmmmm???
