SEO Updates

By Milind Patil

August 2012

Google Page Rank Update

Google Keep updating the page ranks approximatelyafter every 3months interval though it is not fixed.

First update of the month & third of the year was page rank update which happened on 2nd August, 2012

Page rank depends on various factors but to a great extent it depends on inbound links, also knows as backlinks & also the unique quality content you publish on your website.

Google Page Rank (Google PR) is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page's relevance or importance.

Google Panda Refresh 3.9.1 Update

Google said they rolled out a minor Panda refresh on August 19th. This refresh only impacted less than 1% of search queries according to Google.

Google has said the Panda updates will be smoother and more consistent going forward, unlike the Penguin update, which will be more jolting.

Google DMCA Penalty

DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Google announced that they would start penalizing websites with repeat copyright violations

For providing better user experience, Google have developed 200 signals to ensure algorithms deliver the best possible results. From 13th Aug, 2012 Google have started new signal.

According to these new signal the websites having high number of valid copyright removal notices, may appear lower in search results.

Though Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law. So Google won’t be removing any pages from search results unless receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner.

Google has been receiving and processing copyright removal notices every day.

SERP Shrinkage from Top 10 to 7A major Google ranking fluctuation that

seemed to be tied to SERP Shrinking. There was a burst of chatter that people were seeing only 7 results on some SERPs.

So, what’s happening here? Here’s a sample SERP, for “ardor tech ventures”, with numbered results (1-7):

You’ll notice two things right away: (1) “ardor tech ventures” is a brand, and (2) the #1 result has expanded site-links. Not every SERP affected appears to be branded, though – a search for “krill” (the #1 result is a Wikipedia entry for the crustacean) also returns 7 results, for example.

Not sure how much the brand/generic ambiguity plays a part is at all, but certainly every example I’ve seen is an exact domain match that brings up sitelinks.

In other words, if your search term is a domain match and the domain’s result displays sitelinks, then only 7 results are shown.I see the same, but this appears to be tied to sitelinks, not to brands. Consider this:

What Can You Do About It? This isn't an SEO-related change, where an on-page or link-profile

tweak might change your SERP back to 10 results.

This is an algorithmic volume knob Google can turn and we can't, right or wrong.

Advice is to spot-check the SERPs for your main keywords.

Don't just rely on rank-tracking tools - they may tell you that you're in the #8-#10 spot, but they won't tell you whether your SERP cut off after #7. If you're sitting on a lot of #8 keywords, you may find yourself suddenly on Page 2. If that's the case, it could be worth the effort to get back up into the Top 7, especially if the cost of getting from #8 to #7 is relatively low. Of course, this is a recent development, and it's likely Google is testing the waters (and could make a course-correction). My best advice is to pay attention - as part of your regular reporting process, make sure you look at SERPs in the wild, and see what you're up against.