Since many updates that previously would have been given a name (like Penguin or Panda), or even an incremental name and number (Panda 3.0) are now part of Google's core algorithm, how do you know when a update is responsible for a traffic or ranking change? And even if we know, what can we do with this knowledge? Kristine Schachinger and Glenn Gabe answered these questions and more in “Solving SEO Problems in the Post-Google Update World,” a session at SMX West 2017. The following is a summary of their presentations. Breaking the Google Black Box Presenter: Kristine Schachinger, @schachin Kristine Schachinger SMX West 2017 Some
SEOs and webmasters may wish to pass the days of Matt Cutts. Cutts was a Google engineer and the head of Google's spam team. More importantly to marketers, Matt was the “face” of Google Search, speaking regularly at conferences, creating informative videos, and posting news about Google Search on social media. During Cutts' tenure at Google, he could jewelry retouching service usually be counted on to announce major algorithm updates. Then two things happened: Matt Cutts left Google to serve with the US digital service, and Google stopped announcing most algorithm updates. Since Cutts' departure, the role of
Google spokesperson has been split among several Googlers, including Gary Illyes and John Mueller. But these new spokespersons don't fill the same role as Matt Cutts, and they don't necessarily have his level of knowledge of algorithms (Cutts actually helped write the search algorithms). Illyes and Mueller seemed more reluctant than Cutts was to confirm or talk about any updates. Additionally, Google announced that many key updates have been “integrated” into the core algorithm.