Google Algorithm Updates from 2015-2022
Google has a prolonged record of its famous algorithm updates, which it revises from time to time. If you are here to learn about the Google updates, stick to the post till the end. This post covers all the Google algorithm updates till today since 2015.
Before covering all the updates, let’s outline what Google algorithms are.
What is Google Algorithms?
The Google algorithm is a complete and complex process used by Google to rank content in SERPs. It considers different factors while deciding the ranking, including the content’s relevancy and quality to the searcher’s query.
In general, Google’s algorithms are the type of rules set to decide any webpage ranking on search result pages.
How often does Google update its algorithms?
Earlier, Google used to update its algorithm only a few times, but now it updates them too frequently.
As per the present scenario, Google revises its algorithms hundreds and thousands of times yearly.
Depending on the changes, the updates may be major or minor. Some are major enough that significantly impact the SERPs, and the minor ones sometimes remain unnoticed.
The history of Google algorithm updates: 2015-today
Below is an entire history from 2015-to 2022 of Google algorithm updates that you will want to know. We have covered these updates in reverse chronological order—the recent updates at the starting and the former ones later. Let’s get started.
#Google Algorithm Updates in 2022
March 2022 Product Reviews Update
This year in March, Google announced that it would take a few weeks to launch the third release of the product reviews update. This update is based on its two previous updates of product review updates.
Similar to the previous ones, this update will also assist Google in recognizing high-quality product reviews. With this, Google will reward the sites by providing them with a higher ranking on SERPs.
In addition, Google offered new advice regarding ranked lists, “best” product recommendations, and product reviews for multiple products versus individual products.
#Google Algorithm Updates in 2021
December 2021 Product Reviews Update (1 December)
On 1 December, Google revised its product review update. This was the second time Google revised its product review update in the same year. Its first update was announced in April 2021. Similar to its April update, the purpose of this update was to reward great product reviews in search results.
This second update was to reward the product reviews that convey detailed research rather than a thin content containing a summary of some products.
Moreover, Google said it is willing to reward the content containing original research and insightful analysis, especially the content authored by experts or professionals who have thorough topical knowledge.
For this update, Google suggested two best practices that you can use. It asks to include more multimedia such as visuals, audio, or links around your product reviews and include the links to multiple sellers, not only one, to provide more options to the users.
November 2021 Local Search Update (30 November)
Google announced an update on 30 November, which rolled out till 8 December and overlapped with the core update and Product Reviews Update of December 2021.
Google said that this update was for the local search and map pack results. This update was for rebalancing various factors considered in generating local search results.
This update was also called ‘The Vicinity Update’ because it significantly impacted the smaller and local businesses that are closer to the users. With this update, they ranked better than the other bigger and more established businesses that are away.
Since the 2017 hawk update, this was the biggest and most dramatic update.
November 2021 Core Update (17 November)
On 17 November 2021, Google announced a new broad core update named the November 2021 Core Update. This was the third core update released by Google in 2021. This update took about two weeks to fully came into effect.
Similar to all other Google’s core updates, This update was also wide-reaching. It impacted all the websites and SEO, covering all the languages.
Link Spam Update (26 July)
On 26 July 2021, Google announced the link spam update, which took about two weeks to roll out. This update aimed to brush up on the quality of the search results.
The update effectively identifies and nullifies the spammy links more broadly and across multiple languages.
This update majorly affected the sites involved in spammy links.
Google said that the sites with spammy links would not penalize, but the sites will experience a major drop in their search ranking as after this spammy link update, Google will ignore or nullify the links.
The best practice suggested by Google is that ensure your links are natural and are per Google’s webmaster guidelines. You need to focus on producing high-quality links ( both inbound and outbound links).
July 2021 Core Update (1 July)
On 1 July 2021, Google announced July 2021 core update. This update takes about one to two weeks to fully roll out.
The July 2021 core update was the second back-to-back Core update announced by Google. The First was the June 2021 core update announced on 2 June 2021.
According to core update practice, This core update was also an all-around and comprehensive update that slightly changed the entire algorithm but did not change any function specifically.
Spam Update (28 June)
On 28 June 2021, Google announced the release of the second part of its spam update, whose first part was released on 23 June 2021. The update was concluded on the same day of its release.
Google announced that both the spam update were global. This update targeted the web results as well as the image results.
Spam Update (23 June)
On 23 June 2021, Google revealed the release of the Spam Update and concluded it on the same day. Google added that its second part would be released soon after week, and both the updates are one-day updates.
Google did not provide additional details regarding the spam update. It only added the links to its existing Webmaster Guidelines, where it talked about spam prevention and web admin guidelines.
Page Experience Update (15 June)
On 15 June 2021, Google announced the release of Page Experience Update and added that the update would take place slowly and be finished by the end of August 2021.
With this update, Google will start analyzing the page experience signals to check the eligibility of web pages for the top stories carousel and section. Google said that the sites should not expect drastic changes in the search result position. Added that the update rollout is slow and is created to spotlight the pages that offer a greater user experience, and page experience is one of the important factors that will be taken into account.
Google designed this algorithm to judge web pages on the basis of the user experience on a web page. This means the user experience on your webpage will determine your Google ranking. Google designed a new set of metrics called Core Web Vitals to measure the user experience on a web page. The three Core Web Vitals metrics are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – It measures loading performance.
- First Input Delay (FID) – It measures interactivity.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)- It measures visual stability.
The page experience update includes the ranking signals such as mobile-friendliness, page load speed, lack of nosy ads, and HTTPS.
Multitask Unified Model (MUM) Update (June 2021)
In May 2021, Google announced the Multitask Unified Model (MUM) update, a new technology for Google search.
After Hummingbird, Rankbrain, and BERT, the Multitask Unified Model, MUM was the new major shift for Google search. Earlier innovations in machine learning use several models for different tasks, but MUM plans on using a unified/single model for all indexing, information retrieval, and ranking tasks.
This Multitask Unified Model update was 1000 times more potent than the BERT update. Although both MUM and BERT were based on natural language processing, MUM is much more than this. It can multitask to connect the information in new and different ways to present it to users.
MUM functions with AI or understands and processes natural language and responds to complicated search queries of users with multimodal data.
This MUM update is multilingual and can process information from diverse media formats to answer search queries. Along with text, it also understands images, audio, and video files.
The MUM update blends various technologies to improve the user experience by making searches even more contextual and semantic.
Google’s goal with MUM is to answer the complicated search queries for which the regular SERP snippet is insufficient.
Google revealed the further applications of MUM in September 2021.
June 2021 Core Update (2 June)
In June 2021, Google announced June 2021 core update.
On its release, Google told to launch its second sequel in the next month. Google released two separate updates for this core update because some of the updates were not ready for release in June.
Google revealed that the June core update is global and will impact all languages. The update took about two weeks to fully roll out.
Similar to all other Core updates, this latest June 2021 core update was a comprehensive update that would have impacted many sites.
Google revealed that with this update, your site ranking might fluctuate; it may go up, down, or remain stable temporarily because the release of its second update may revise your ranking again.
April 2021 Product Reviews Update
In April 2021, Google released a new search algorithm update named April 2021 Product review update. This update is to promote and reward the sites with outstanding product reviews rather than thin content. Google said it would reward the sites containing in-depth, insightful analysis and original research about the product, especially the reviews written by the experts that know the topic well.
Regarding this update, Google advised focusing on providing detailed and insightful content written by topical professionals. In addition to this, Google also offers a list of questions that you should consider in your reviews. Your product reviews should answer these questions. We are briefing some of the questions here.
Your reviews should provide expert knowledge about the product, explain what the product looks like, its measurements, the benefits, and drawbacks of the products, discuss how the product is different from others and much more.
Passage Ranking (10 February)
Google announced a passage indexing update in October 2020 which went live on 10 February 2021. Later this update was called passage ranking update. It was a new way of Google ranking in which it started to rank specific passages from web pages in relevance to the searcher’s query.
Google said it is sometimes hard to find answers to very specific queries that might get buried down in the web pages. Therefore, with this passage ranking update, Google will be able to index the passages on the web pages along with indexing the web pages.
This update aims to understand the relevancy of passages better, which will help Google find the exact information you are looking for. It is more like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Google denoted that this Passage ranking update may affect 7% of search queries over all languages.
Additionally, Google did not advise to change anything on your site regarding this update because this was more about How Google understands your text.
#Google Algorithm Updates in 2020
December 2020 Core Update
In December 2020, Google announced the release of its new core update called the December 2020 core update. This update took one to two weeks to come into effect fully, and it was the third core update of 2020. The first core update was in January 2020, and the second was in May 2020.
Similar to other core updates, this December core update was also wide-reaching and comprehensive, which impacted the SEOs and websites covering all languages.
BERT Expands (October 2020)
In October 2020, Google released its BERT Expands update. BERT implies Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. It can process and understands the language more naturally. Although it did not directly affect the SEO, it was an important update in Google’s history. With this update, BERT will power all the English-based search queries on Google.
This was a huge jump compared to last October when Google announced the BERT. At that time, it only powered 10% of all search queries on the site.
Later, BERT was expanded to over 70 languages in December 2019.
Google’s aim with BERT was to understand the web pages better and improve the relevancy of search results to provide more relevant content to the searcher’s query.
With BERT, Google said that the results on specific searches have improved by 7% using different AI and machine learning techniques.
It includes the new spelling algorithm, which will help with correct spelling and provide the exact passage that answers users’ queries.
It includes Google map updates, a new lens, AR features, and Duplex technology. Users can also use the mic icon and humm for the song to get the results.
May 2020 Core Update
In May 2020, Google released its May 2020 core update, which took a few weeks to roll out. This was the second core update of 2020; the first update was released in January.
This update was also a wide-reaching and thorough update that affected many websites and SEO, similar to other core updates. Likewise, it did not target any specific function.
January 2020 Core Update
In January 2020, Google announced the release of the core update named January 2020 core update. This core update was relatively weak in comparison to other core updates. Many SEO experts and webmasters said that it did not impact the sites much as the other core updates do.
After about four months, this update was followed by a strong May 2020 core update.
#Google Algorithm Updates in 2019
BERT Natural Language Processing Update (25 October)
In October 2019, Google announced the release of its new algorithm update called BERT update. This was the biggest change to its search system since RankBrain. Google said that this would impact every 1 in 10 search results. At first, it rolled out for the English language and later expanded to all other languages.
BERT is for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and was designed to understand and process natural language.
BERT helped Google understand web pages’ content more like humans do and related them to users’ search queries. This means Google understands the context of words used in search queries and the content on web pages better with the help of BERT and provides the most relevant result to the searcher’s query. It also impacted the featured snippets in search results.
September 2019 Core Update (24 September)
On 24 September, Google announced the release of the September 2019 Core Update. This was the third core update in 2019 and was the second time Google pre-announced the core update. This update was again similar to its other core updates that are thorough and affect SEO and websites. Google said that this Core update influences how it ranks websites and decides which web page is most relevant for a specific query.
June 2019 Core Update (3 June)
On 3 June 2019, Google launched the June 2019 core update that covered the overall aspects of Google’s algorithm. This was the first time Google pre-announced the release of an update.
The update was comprehensive and was to enhance the user experience.
March 2019 Core Update (March 15)
On 15 March, Google announced a core update that confused everyone because it was without any name. This put the update in confusion, and people started assuming what the update was and why it wasn’t named.
Knowing the confusion, Google quickly named the update and called it March 2019 Core Update.”
# Google Algorithm Updates in 2018
August 2018 Core Update ( Medic Update) (Aug. 1)
In August 2018, Google released its major update named the August 2018 broad core update that bounced up the SEO world.
In this core update, Google made significant changes to its algorithm that shooked the web pages ranking on the SERPs. This update benefited the sites that were competent but previously left behind or overlooked by Google.
In this regard, Google advised the website that there is no way to fix the dropped ranking because the ranking was due to the overlooking of the potential sites. With this update, the deserving sites finally make the gain. Thus, all webmasters should make strong and unique content that will help them rank better.
April 2018 Core Update (20 April)
Google did not announce the release of its April 2018 core update and later confirmed after the suspicion of people regarding the core update.
Google said that it routinely updates its algorithm many times a year, and there’s nothing that can be done around the site to improve its ranking. It further added that it is to reward the under-reward site.
This update was to improve the user experience by offering the most relevant result for the search queries.
Google advised focusing on creating and improving the website quality so that the site’s ranking will not go down when a similar update is released.
March 2018 Core Update (March 12)
Google did not mention releasing the March 2018 core update and verified the release of the update after that. This update is quickly followed by another core update released in April. Google released this core update to improve the search query results in Google.
This update affected many websites, and their ranking fluctuated greatly.
Google said that there the sites that experienced a drop in their ranking could not fix this. Instead can create excellent and quality content to improve their ranking.
Google added that the drop in ranking does not necessarily mean something wrong with the web pages; rather, it is because Google has changed its ranking algorithm, and the overlooked sites are benefiting from this update.
#Google Algorithm Updates in 2017
Mid-December Updates (~Dec. 14-19)
From 14 to 19 December 2017, Google rolled out an update that affected several search industries. This was called the Mid-December Updates or the Google Maccabees Update. Google later confirmed this update saying that it made several minor changes in its ranking algorithm to improve the relevancy of the search results.
The sites targeting a great number of keyword variants, sites with no schema data, and sites relying on doorway pages were affected the most by this update.
Local Update (22 August)
The August local update or Hawk update was released in August 2017.
This was the correction to the 2016 Possum update. The possum update changes the way the search filter works. It was designed to filter out the business that shares the same phone numbers or the same websites, but it started filtering out the business located nearby. This created a problem for the local businesses physically located near each other, in the same building, or even on the same street.
With the release of this Hawk update or local update, Google made changes to the proximity filter that unfairly affected the local ranking. It makes the local business appear on the related search query that competes with the others already ranking on SERPs.
Although it still filters businesses situated in the same building, it does not filter out many businesses nearby.
Fred Update (9 March, unconfirmed)
In March 2017, Google made an algorithm update that it never confirms. Many SEO experts and web admins have noted the fluctuations in the Google ranking and thought it to be because of an update.
The SEO community assumes the update has targeted more of the link quality aspects of the websites. This update was named Fred Update because one of Google’s members amusingly said that all updates would be called Fred.
There have been reports and discussions about changes around the links from the ‘black hat’ SEO community, indicating that this is a spam algorithm update.
#Google Algorithm Updates in 2016
Penguin Update 4.0 (Sept. 23)
On 23 September 2016, Google updated the Penguin algorithm after about two years. It was the fourth major and last penguin update. This is because Google revealed that Penguin is now part of its core search algorithm. This means it will refresh the data in real-time. When Google recrawls and reindexes the pages, they will be evaluated by the penguin filter, and spammy pages will be caught or freed by the penguin filter accordingly.
Penguin was designed to filter the websites spamming Google’s search results. Google updated the penguin update periodically. The sites deemed to be spammy in their first update were penalized until the next update came.
In addition to this, the penguin update becomes more granular, too, which means it may impact the ranking for particular pages on a site, parts of a site, or the whole site.
Possum Update (1 September)
In September 2016, Google released the Possum update that changed the method of Google’s filter working.
This update was designed to filter the local results on Google to eliminate the websites that appear as duplicates. That means if anyone creates two websites for a single service, Google will filter one out of them, and only one will appear in local search results.
Google introduced this update to enhance the user experience, but it goes overboard.
Instead of eliminating the redundant sites, it has filtered out the sites or businesses situated near each other. That results in a drop in their ranking in Google local search results. This update affected many local businesses in 2016.
Mobile-Friendly Update 2 (May)
In May 2016, Goole rolled out its another Mobile-Friendly update. This update was to boost the first 2015 mobile-friendly update.
Google announced that this update might take time to fully roll out and come and appear into effect as this update is a page-by-page signal, and it may take time to access all the web pages.
Google said that if your website is already mobile-friendly, you need not worry as it will not affect the site.
January 2016 Core Update (18 January)
In January, many SEOs and web admins noticed the fluctuations in the search ranking in Google. Everyone suspected it to be a Penguin update, but later Google confirmed it to be a core update.
This was the January 2018 core update and was a comprehensive update that covers the overall aspects of the website’s SERPs. This was the first core update of 2018, which was followed by March and April core updates.
#Google Algorithm Updates in 2015
RankBrain (25 October)
On 25 October 2015, Google announced the release of its new algorithm
RankBrain. Google said that it’s a machine-learning AI that it will use to process a “very large fraction” of search results. It was a major release since Hummingbird.
RankBrain aims to process the user’s search query and examine billions of web pages to find out and rank the most relevant and best-fit webpage.
It’s a new way of processing search queries that goes even beyond what has been used in it. It helps to understand the meaning behind the search query.
For instance, If RankBrain finds an unfamiliar word or phrase in the query, its AI guesses the most suitable word with a similar meaning and displays the results accordingly. This type of handling technology is never seen before in any previous update.
RainkBrain is also said to be the third most important ranking signal. Although it’s not a direct ranking signal, it’s a query processing tool. But eventually, it affects the ranking of web pages.
At starting it was used on a large fraction of search results, but later it was used on all Google searches.
Panda Update 4.2 (22 July)
On 22 July 2015, Google rolled out the Panda update 4.2, which was a slow update and took months to show its effect. The websites that are hit by panda update will not see its effects quickly but may notice a gradual drop in their ranking.
This update impacted around 2% – 3 % of English language queries.
Quality Update (May)
On 19 May 2015, Google confirmed the release of an update called Quality update. Google said that it had changed the way it assesses the quality of content, which caused the ranking to shake up.
Google did not provide specifications on how it asses the quality of content now.
Mobile-Friendly Update (21 April)
On 21 April 2015, Google rolled out its first mobile-friendly update. This was meant to affect the sites that are not mobile-friendly. Google analysis how fast and mobile versions of your websites or webpages are.
Google said that this update does not equally apply to all devices or results. It affects the search rankings only on mobile devices. It will be applied to individual pages but not on the complete website, and the update affects the search results across all languages.
To conclude-
These were the Google algorithm updates from 2015 to 2022 in reverse chronological order. Google practices updating its algorithm from time to time, which affects the ranking of web pages on SERPs. Some are rewarded with higher rankings, and the ranking of others goes down.
Sometimes these updates are to improve our sites and content, and sometimes it makes changes to its ranking algorithm. To gain a higher ranking in SERPs, Google always mentions following the best SEO practice and focusing on creating the most robust and unique content. It advises web admins to create websites and content in accordance with the updates.
We hope this has helped you to know the Google algorithm updates from 2015 to 2022.