Major Google SEO Updates & Algorithm Changes from 2009 to 2017

Google has a long history of famous algorithm updates, search index changes and refreshes.

2017 Updates

• Snippet Length Increase — November 30, 2017
• Featured Snippet Drop — October 27, 2017
• Chrome HTTPS Warnings — October 17, 2017
• Google Tops 50% HTTPS — April 16, 2017
• "Fred" (Unconfirmed) — March 8, 2017
• Intrusive Interstitial Penalty — January 10, 2017

2016 Updates

• Penguin 4.0, Phase 2 — October 6, 2016
• Penguin 4.0, Phase 1 — September 27, 2016
• Penguin 4.0 Announcement — September 23, 2016
• Image/Universal Drop — September 13, 2016
• "Possum" — September 1, 2016
• Mobile-friendly 2 — May 12, 2016
• AdWords Shake-up — February 23, 2016

2015 Updates

• RankBrain* — October 26, 2015
• Panda 4.2 (#28) — July 17, 2015
• The Quality Update — May 3, 2015
• Mobile Update AKA "Mobilegeddon" — April 22, 2015

2014 Updates

• Pigeon Expands (UK, CA, AU) — December 22, 2014
• Penguin Everflux — December 10, 2014
• Pirate 2.0 — October 21, 2014
• Penguin 3.0 — October 17, 2014
• "In The News" Box — October 1, 2014
• Panda 4.1 (#27) — September 23, 2014
• Authorship Removed — August 28, 2014
• HTTPS/SSL Update — August 6, 2014
• Pigeon — July 24, 2014
• Authorship Photo Drop — June 28, 2014
• Payday Loan 3.0 — June 12, 2014
• Panda 4.0 (#26) — May 19, 2014
• Payday Loan 2.0 — May 16, 2014
• Page Layout #3 — February 6, 2014

2013 Updates

• Authorship Shake-up  —  December 19, 2013
• Penguin 2.1 (#5)  —  October 4, 2013
• Hummingbird  —  August 20, 2013
• In-depth Articles  —  August 6, 2013
• Knowledge Graph Expansion  —  July 19, 2013
• Panda Recovery  —  July 18, 2013
• "Payday Loan" Update  —  June 11, 2013
• Panda Dance  —  June 11, 2013
• Penguin 2.0 (#4)  —  May 22, 2013
• Domain Crowding  —  May 21, 2013
• "Phantom"  —  May 9, 2013
• Panda #25  —  March 14, 2013
• Panda #24  —  January 22, 2013

2012 Updates

• Panda #23  —  December 21, 2012
• Knowledge Graph Expansion  —  December 4, 2012
• Panda #22  —  November 21, 2012
• Panda #21  —  November 5, 2012
• Page Layout #2  —  October 9, 2012
• Penguin #3  —  October 5, 2012
• Panda #20  —  September 27, 2012
• Exact-Match Domain (EMD) Update  —  September 27, 2012
• Panda 3.9.2 (#19)  —  September 18, 2012
• Panda 3.9.1 (#18)  —  August 20, 2012
• 7-Result SERPs  —  August 14, 2012
• DMCA Penalty ("Pirate")  —  August 10, 2012
• Panda 3.9 (#17)  —  July 24, 2012
• Link Warnings  —  July 19, 2012
• Panda 3.8 (#16)  —  June 25, 2012
• Panda 3.7 (#15)  —  June 8, 2012
• Penguin 1.1 (#2)  —  May 25, 2012
• Knowledge Graph  —  May 16, 2012
• Panda 3.6 (#14)  —  April 27, 2012
• Penguin  —  April 24, 2012
• Panda 3.5 (#13)  —  April 19, 2012
• Panda 3.4 (#12)  —  March 23, 2012
• Search Quality Video  —  March 12, 2012
• Panda 3.3 (#11)  —  February 27, 2012
• Venice  —  February 27, 2012
• Ads Above The Fold  —  January 19, 2012
• Panda 3.2 (#10)  —  January 18, 2012

2011 Updates

• Panda 3.1 (#9)  —  November 18, 2011
• Query Encryption  —  October 18, 2011
• Panda "Flux" (#8)  —  October 5, 2011
• Panda 2.5 (#7)  —  September 28, 2011
• Pagination Elements  —  September 15, 2011
• Expanded Sitelinks  —  August 16, 2011
• Panda 2.4 (#6)  —  August 12, 2011
• Panda 2.3 (#5)  —  July 23, 2011
• Google+  —  June 28, 2011
• Panda 2.2 (#4)  —  June 21, 2011
• Schema.org  —  June 2, 2011
• Panda 2.1 (#3)  —  May 9, 2011
• Panda 2.0 (#2)  —  April 11, 2011
• The +1 Button  —  March 30, 2011
• Panda/Farmer  —  February 23, 2011
• Attribution Update  —  January 28, 2011

2010 Updates

• Negative Reviews  —  December 1, 2010
• Social Signals  —  December 1, 2010
• Instant Previews  —  November 1, 2010
• Google Instant  —  September 1, 2010
• Brand Update  —  August 1, 2010
• Caffeine (Rollout)  —  June 1, 2010
• Google Places  —  April 1, 2010

2009 Updates

• Real-time Search  —  December 1, 2009
• Caffeine (Preview)  —  August 1, 2009
• Vince  —  February 1, 2009
• Rel-canonical Tag  —  February 1, 2009

On Page SEO Techniques

"Basic On-Page SEO Techniques"

There are two main factors in search engine optimization. On-page optimization and off-page optimization. Both factors are connected with each others for website search engine ranking. It is very important to optimize both techniques for better website ranking in search engine. On-page optimization help us to create website search SEO and search engine friendly, off page assist us to create quality back links for great ranking.

Some on page SEO techniques and their outputs:

Meta Title Tag:- Meta title tag describe the about web page content. It is most important part of on page SEO. Title tag with the appearance of keyword make easy to keywords ranking. We can find title in three places external website, search engine result pages and browsers.

Character Limit: - Google prefer character limit less than 70 character including space. With this character limit Google displays in search results.

Title Structure: - Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Brand Name

Meta Description Tag:- Meta description is the HTML text which explain about web page content. It increases the possibility of user’s clicks. Means to say it increase the click through-rates of web pages. Most favorable character limit for meta description tag is 155-160 characters including space.

Meta Keywords:- Meta keywords is the part which also important in on-page SEO. This part help to boost keyword ranking in other famous search engines like Yahoo, Bing, MSN and Ask etc. So we can say appearance of meta keyword can increase the possibility of better ranking in other search engines.

Heading tag:- This tag represent the different section of web page content. Head tag help search engine spider relevancy between heading tag and web page content. Including that it also give the idea to user about web page content.

XML Sitemap:- Many webmasters think that XML sitemap is useless in SEO. It is the important part of website which help website in indexing and made website accessible to users and search engine crawler.

Robots.txt File: A robots.txt file restricts access to your site by search engine robots that crawl the web. These bots are automated, and before they access pages of a site, they check to see if a robots.txt file exists that prevents them from accessing certain pages.

URL Canonicalization: Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls:

• www.example.com
• example.com
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/home.asp
  

But technically all of these urls are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google “canonicalizes” a URL, we try to pick the URL that seems like the best representative from that set.

Image ALT tag:- With the all on page parts image alt tag is also play very important role in website ranking. Search engine crawler cannot read image without this tag. So we can say image alt help crawler to read about image. It is also helpful to boost keyword ranking with images.

Google Introducing Rich Cards For Mobile SERP

Rich cards are a new Search result format building on the success of rich snippets. Just like rich snippets, rich cards use schema.org structured markup to display content in an even more engaging and visual format, with a focus on providing a better mobile user experience.

For site owners, this is a new opportunity to stand out in Search results and attract more targeted users to your page. For example, if you have a recipe site, you can build a richer preview of your content with a prominent image for each dish. This visual format helps users find what they want right away, so you're getting users who specifically want that especially delicious cookie recipe you have.
We’re starting to show rich cards for two content categories: recipes and movies. They will appear initially on mobile search results in English for google.com. We’re actively experimenting with more opportunities to provide more publishers with a rich preview of their content.
We’ve built a comprehensive set of tools and completely updated our developer documentation to take site owners and developers from initial exploration through implementation to performance monitoring. Explore rich card types and identify where your content fits Browse the new gallery with screenshots and code samples of each markup type. Test and tweak your markup We strongly recommend using JSON-LD in your implementation.

Find out which fields are essential to mark up in order for a rich card to appear. We’ve also listed additional fields that can enhance your rich cards.

See a preview in the revamped Structured Data Testing Tool of how the rich card might appear in Search (currently available for recipes and movies).

Use the the Structured Data Testing Tool to see errors as you tweak your markup in real time.

Source : Google Webmaster Central Blog