Google has made some important steps in 2015, among which we can mention the following as the most important development.
Alphabet, diversifying business. This was one of the biggest steps Google has made last year and it was created to make some major changes in the organizational structures in order to make them more organized than they were before. Some may point that Google was getting somehow chaotic due to the many new projects that were starting up and was branching them randomly. We can rate this as the biggest and most efficient updates that have come from the search giant in 2015.
There were other updates as well in 2015, such as Google Photos, Android Marshmallow, Cardboard and the launch of Android Play.
However when it comes to SEO we must mention that the Mobile-Friendly Algorithm has been deployed and impacted the rankings of millions worldwide.
No fierce animals were adopted in 2015
Well, there were of course doomsday talks in the main forums regarding the next Penguin Update by the end of the year, but it seems that the roll out has been postponed to this year. Whether this is likely to happen in 2016 we have yet to wait and see.
There was however an attempt that has rolled out a slow Panda update, but no major impact has been signaled by webmasters. The impact was only on 2-3% of the queries and it was cataloged as a refresh rather than update. The Mozcast – The Google Algorithm Weather Report has not picked up any movements during the period, but you’ll never know. It might be an invisible update that we could notice in the upcoming months, probably when it’s too late.
Which brings us to the latest talks and topics regarding the Google updates, the launch of RankBrain, the search giant’s own AI Machine. Google has been one of the biggest corporate sponsors of Artificial Intelligence and has invested heavily over the last years, mostly for videos, speech, translation and, recently, search.
Bloomberg has conducted an interview last October with Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist with the company, you can call him one of the tech guys from Mountain View, California, to bring an enlightenment regarding this recent wizardry which of course than led to talks such as Skynet and robots taking over the world etc. This is how it usually gets when there are talks about AI…..
Greg also mentioned that the RankBrain is one of the “hundreds” of signals that go into an algorithm that determines what results appear on a Google search page and where they are ranked.
The impact of RankBrain on websites in term of SEO have not yet been reported, however RankBrain has become the third-most important signal contributing to the result of a search query.
The topic now is highly discussed in forums and communities dedicated to Search Engine Optimization and the key idea behind many of the posts, comments and articles is that RankBrain will surely impact SEO in the future. As you may know it’s the machine learning addon, and it will continue to enhance itself within some years and it would make life tougher for SEOs.
My opinion is that RankBrain is just the start of a new way to look at SEO and search. Producing high quality, information focused content is now more important than it ever was and you should focus more on it! From the SEO perspective, the changes are really small at this moment. You still need excellent on-site optimization, white hat link building and an efficient social media strategy. However, content will continue to be the key factor as the RankBrain algorithm continues to evolve and grow.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this new Wizardry, do send you comments bellow.
