This day in search marketing history: January 21

Google explains the “core” algorithm

In 2016, Google’s Andrey Lipattsev explained the “core” algorithm.

This happened following the news about Panda becoming part of Google’s core algorithm. SEOs wanted to better understand what being part of Google’s core algorithm meant.

Put simply, it meant that an algorithm is consistent enough that Google doesn’t have to worry about it because it’s been tested, works the way it should, and won’t require many changes in the future. As Lipattsev explained:

It is less about the functionality, which means it probably doesn’t change that much over time, and it is more about how we perceive it, in the context of the algorithm. Do we still think this is an experimental thing, it is running for a while and we aren’t sure how long it will last? Or is it like PageRank, it is part of it, it will always be there, at least in the foreseeable future and then probably call it in certain context part of the core algorithm.

So now when you hear about the latest Google core updates, hopefully you better understand what Google’s core algorithm means.

Read all about it in: Google Explains What It Means To Be Part Of The “Core” Algorithm

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Also on this day 

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Google adds new robots tag indexifembedded

2022: The tag let you define if you wanted your content indexed when it was embedded through iframes or other means.

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Google updates product structured data for car review snippets

2022: Google added a note to the product structured data help documentation to explain how to specify car markup and still have Product review snippet feature eligibility.

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Google Ads issue impacted some Discover and Performance Max campaigns between Jan. 18-21

2022: It was a temporary technical issue that affected serving on YouTube inventory.

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Google will drop support for data-vocabulary.org structured data on April 6

2020: Site owners needed to convert to the schema.org markup if they wanted their pages to be eligible for Google rich results.

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CallRail adds call analytics integration with Google My Business

2020: CallRail developed the solution partly as a response to the rise of “zero-click search” and the “cannibalization” of website traffic by GMB.

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Google’s 2015 “Bad Ads” Report: 780 Million Ads, 25K App Accounts Shut Down

2016: One of Google’s efforts was to prevent accidental mobile clicks when app developers purposely placed ads too close to application buttons.

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Bing Boasts Continuous Updates To Their Search Engine Daily

2016: Bing deploys multiple updates per day in an effort to constantly improve the search results and features.

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Google Improves Weather Search Results On Android In Time For Winter Storm Jonas

2016: Weather-related search results would now include hourly sky conditions, air quality and severe weather alerts.

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Google Ventures-Backed RetailMeNot Climbs Out Of Its Google Penalty

2015: It was unclear what changes RetailMeNot made to recover from the Google Panda algorithm, but their rankings did bounce back.

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Bing Ads Rolls Out Enhanced Sitelinks Globally, Adds Sitelink Device Preference

2015: Additional copy below each Sitelink extension became available in most markets and languages supported by Bing Ads.

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Right To Be Forgotten: Google Tells Europe It Won’t Scrub Google.com

2015: “It’s our strong view that there needs to be some way of limiting the concept, because it is a European concept,” said David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer.

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Keep Writing Quality Content: SEO Bloggers React To Matt Cutts’ Claim “Guest Blogging Is Dead”

2014: A round-up of industry reactions, summarizing comments from a selection of popular bloggers.

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Expedia & Google: No Comment From Both About Possible Expedia Penalty

2014: Expedia appeared to have been hit by a Google penalty related to unnatural links.

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Marin: 40% Of Google PLA Clicks To Come From Smartphones By Dec 2014

2014: Marin expected retailers to allocate roughly a third of their PPC budgets to PLAs.

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Pinterest Adds Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-Free & Paleo Filters For Recipe Related Searches

2014: Pinterest also added an “Indulge Me” button to perform searches for “not so healthy” dessert recipes.

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As Google Evolves To Satisfy User Demands, Others Are Necessarily Marginalized

2013: “People no longer have patience for traditional search results … They mostly just want quick (and reliable) answers, which is exactly what Google is increasingly giving them.”

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Google’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Logo

2013: The Doodle was in shades of blue, green and yellow. With Dr. King’s face as one of the “O”s in the Google logo.

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A To Do List For Google’s New CEO Larry Page

2011: How well would the leadership shuffling tackle Google’s many challenges?

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Google Turns To Page: The Day Two Narrative

2011: The desire to get some of its old startup fire back was one of the driving forces behind Page’s ascension.

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Google Sets Sights On Content Farms In 2011

2011: Matt Cutts promises a renewed effort to take action against content farms (which he defined as “sites with shallow or low-quality content”).

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Google Says Search Quality Improved With New Spam Detection

2011: A redesigned document-level classifier made it harder for on-page spam to impact Google’s search index.

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First Google Toolbar PageRank Update Of 2011

2011: It was arguably the first update in almost 9 months – though Toolbar PageRank was very out of date and didn’t have a direct impact on ranking.

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AdWords Preview Tool Gets Mobile-Focused Facelift

2011: The tool let advertisers see how their ads looked on different devices (iPhone, Android, etc.) on multiple carriers.

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Small Google Navigation Element Changes

2011: The first was making the Google search left-side bar more compact and the second was changing the menu choices in the top menu while in Gmail.

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Search In Pictures: GoogleBot T-Shirt, Yahoo Rodeo & Yahoo Rubber Duckies

2011: The latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.

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Google Beats Estimates With Very Strong Q4: $6.67 Billion

2010: Google reported revenues of $6.67 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, representing a 17% increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $5.70 billion.

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Another Person No One’s Heard Of Tries To Trademark SEO

2010: This was the second time in about two years that someone with no general stature, reputation or well-known and documented history had tried to claim a trademark on SEO. 

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Bing As iPhone Default Search Engine Part Deux

2010: Some additional information asserted default search status on the iPhone was a real possibility for Bing. 

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44% Of Google News Readers Only Scan Headlines? Maybe Not!

2010: Google really wasn’t the content vampire that some news publishers accused it of being.

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Facebook To Cut Some Microsoft Ads

2010: Facebook and Microsoft scaled back their display ad relationship.

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The YouTube Music Discovery Project

2010: The tool helped you search for music and create YouTube playlists based on that query.

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What’s For Dinner? Bing Mixes Recipes Into Search Results

2010: Bing pulled the recipes from popular websites and let you filter by holiday, meals, ratings and convenience.

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Google’s Sergey Brin Writes About His Relief Mission Visit To Haiti

2010: Brin said the people of Haiti were “the real heroes.”

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A Quick January 2009 SEO Update

2009: Updates many SEOs and SEMs noticed at Google, Yahoo and Ask.com in the past week.

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Layoffs At Microsoft Widely Expected To Be Announced This Week

2009: This was expected to impact around 6,000 to 8,000 employees of its 95,000 workforce.

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Microsoft Offers SearchPerks Incentive

2009: It was a three-day incentive to encourage participants to do more searches on Live Search. 

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The Obama Effect: Google Says President Changed Search Activity

2009: Google shared some interesting facts and figures about inauguration-related search activity.

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Google: All Your NYC Tourists Are Belong To Us

2009: NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a partnership with Google to use Google Maps on a new tourism website and information center.

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Comparing Mobile Search Surveys: Early Adopters Vs. Mainstream Users

2008: An informal, online reader survey, of two different audiences, on a range of high-level topics pertaining to mobile search yields different results.

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The Google Webmaster Tools Quick Start Guide

2008: Google created the guide to help webmasters learn the features and reasons to use the tool.

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Project Palimpsest: Google To Host Open-Source Science Data

2008: The data Google would be hosting would be available for scientists and also for free for anyone.

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Yahoo Planning Big Job Cuts?

2008: Perhaps as many as 2,500.

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Yahoo Tests Delicious Integration In Search Results

2008: For some users, a search would show whether a page listed in Yahoo results was also on Delicious and how it had been tagged.

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Google-DoubleClick Drama Moves To European Stage

2008: The Europeans appeared poised to be more aggressive than their American counterparts in holding Google’s feet to the fire.

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Search Engines Commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day

2008: Google had an artistic logo, with children drawing the face of Martin Luther King Jr. on a sidewalk.

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From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

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Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

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