Yesterday Amit Singhal (http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search.html) from Google confirmed a new bigger Google Index update. The impact on all the searches is approximately 35%, which is as measured by the number of searches every day really a lot. As opposed to the Panda update it has an impact of nearly the double amount of searches!
You can imagine how my heart beat was after I heard this news. Before there was no “name” for the update I thought about a cool name like “black widow update” or something similar because I assumed a hugh impact in the Serps.
In the description from Amit and in some articles like on Techcrunch http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/03/googles-new-algorithm-update-impacts-35-of-searches/ you’ll find more details. Google wants to supply the information need as the user want to have fresh content on a specific query or not. If you’re looking for event related content then you expect freshness and no content from old events e.g. if you’re looking for “olympics”. Then you get results for London 2012. On strong news related searches Google invented the QDF feature lots of years ago which also shows fresh articles especially newspaper content. But to analyze to type of the query and giving the user more fresh content is the right way to improve the quality of the Serps.
There is an impact on 1/3rd of all queries
If you think about the 35% again, then it means that one third of every query is related to fresh content. For webmasters with less new/fresh content it could be difficult to rank high because if the most of the queries you ranked in the past where outranked by fresh content (where linkpop should be nonrelevant) you have to think about creating new content. The optimization of tag pages or static pages will be affected by this new update.
To get a better overview about the impact of the update in the google.com index I analyzed our current results we computed right after the update. Our metric for that is the SEO Visibility. It is a metrics based on the search volume of a keyword, the type (informational, navigational or transactional search) and the rank of a URL. The database is the biggest SEO database in the world and you can also check the results by yourself in our Searchmetrics Essentials software. There is also a free demo account after a 3min registration. 😉
Many winners, a few losers
Usually I post after those big updates at first the losers and then the winners. The reason is that there is mostly a correlation identifiable, like after the several Panda updates. This time I post the winners first. Because after this update I found NO type of losers but a lot winners which have lots of similarities. And this is also the correlation for this update. Google prefers sites like news sites, broadcast sites, video portals and a lot Brand sites. This is also a type of sites which have regularly fresh content and a big brand with higher CTRs.
In the list of winners you see many news, broadcasting and brand sites:
| Domain | SEO Visibility 11/06/2011 | SEO Visibility 10/30/2011 | Percent | |
| Brand | last.fm | 1.386.908 | 1.232.115 | 12,56 |
| Brand | overstock.com | 814.747 | 774.752 | 5,16 |
| Brand | lonelyplanet.com | 412.446 | 377.565 | 9,24 |
| Brand | rockhall.com | 62.610 | 36.387 | 72,07 |
| Brand | marthastewart.com | 170.392 | 147.258 | 15,71 |
| Brand | wikiquote.org | 315.054 | 292.471 | 7,72 |
| Brand | dominos.com | 86.572 | 65.370 | 32,43 |
| Brand | papajohns.com | 101.561 | 81.411 | 24,75 |
| Brand | squidoo.com | 406.930 | 386.806 | 5,20 |
| Brand | soundcloud.com | 229.032 | 211.331 | 8,38 |
| Brand | playstation.com | 176.529 | 159.381 | 10,76 |
| Brand | comcast.com | 187.415 | 170.841 | 9,70 |
| Brand | hotels.com | 210.944 | 195.153 | 8,09 |
| Brand | vzw.com | 54.978 | 40.428 | 35,99 |
| Brand | guitarcenter.com | 103.490 | 89.295 | 15,90 |
| Brand | cox.com | 91.860 | 80.679 | 13,86 |
| Brand | buy.com | 163.761 | 152.926 | 7,09 |
| Brand | citibank.com | 120.652 | 109.880 | 9,80 |
| Brand | scottrade.com | 32.891 | 22.257 | 47,78 |
| Brand | aim.com | 77.448 | 67.757 | 14,30 |
| Brand | southwestvacations.com | 27.985 | 18.632 | 50,20 |
| Brand | boostmobile.com | 39.996 | 31.092 | 28,64 |
| Brand | hawaiianair.com | 35.970 | 27.076 | 32,85 |
| Brand | nationalcar.com | 26.454 | 17.583 | 50,45 |
| Brand | skype.com | 97.380 | 89.053 | 9,35 |
| Brand | garmin.com | 71.229 | 62.918 | 13,21 |
| Brand | sonypictures.com | 154.248 | 146.029 | 5,63 |
| Brand | opera.com | 50.612 | 42.483 | 19,13 |
| Brand | napster.com | 31.720 | 23.632 | 34,22 |
| Celebrity news | perezhilton.com | 643.042 | 552.660 | 16,35 |
| Celebrity news | thehollywoodgossip.com | 166.931 | 138.466 | 20,56 |
| Celebrity news | hollywoodreporter.com | 219.287 | 201.657 | 8,74 |
| Celebrity news | hellomagazine.com | 34.035 | 22.250 | 52,97 |
| Celebrity news | actressarchives.com | 57.257 | 48.790 | 17,35 |
| Government | ny.gov | 144.173 | 102.536 | 40,61 |
| Government | bls.gov | 251.541 | 223.890 | 12,35 |
| News | huffingtonpost.com | 1.895.562 | 1.782.006 | 6,37 |
| News | dailymail.co.uk | 617.552 | 587.989 | 5,03 |
| News | allthingsd.com | 63.558 | 42.620 | 49,13 |
| News | businessinsider.com | 225.582 | 207.656 | 8,63 |
| News | nj.com | 210.528 | 197.621 | 6,53 |
| News | rr.com | 141.118 | 128.880 | 9,50 |
| News | medicalnewstoday.com | 136.022 | 125.037 | 8,79 |
| News | christianpost.com | 49.681 | 38.864 | 27,83 |
| News | salon.com | 107.948 | 97.666 | 10,53 |
| Tech news | engadget.com | 515.212 | 472.053 | 9,14 |
| Tech news | techcrunch.com | 294.944 | 268.400 | 9,89 |
| TV | tvguide.com | 697.920 | 663.713 | 5,15 |
| TV | aoltv.com | 275.456 | 245.542 | 12,18 |
| TV | zap2it.com | 301.686 | 282.817 | 6,67 |
| TV | buddytv.com | 224.144 | 205.470 | 9,09 |
| University | pitt.edu | 96.172 | 81.635 | 17,81 |
| Video | youtube.com | 6.942.619 | 5.464.798 | 27,04 |
| Video | myspace.com | 2.982.113 | 2.587.181 | 15,26 |
| Video | metacafe.com | 367.335 | 338.992 | 8,36 |
| Video | break.com | 211.243 | 189.391 | 11,54 |
| Video | funnyordie.com | 189.309 | 169.583 | 11,63 |
| Other | familydoctor.org | 150.551 | 122.338 | 23,06 |
| Other | rhapsody.com | 128.108 | 107.650 | 19,00 |
| Other | examiner.com | 97.413 | 80.017 | 21,74 |
| Other | theblackfriday.com | 83.978 | 66.991 | 25,36 |
| Other | allthelyrics.com | 48.348 | 32.342 | 49,49 |
| Other | ratemyprofessors.com | 120.409 | 106.064 | 13,52 |
| Other | cheapoair.com | 104.694 | 93.718 | 11,71 |
| Other | applebees.com | 49.469 | 39.221 | 26,13 |
| Other | heavy.com | 38.192 | 28.776 | 32,72 |
| Other | stars21.com | 33.680 | 24.624 | 36,78 |
| Other | java-gaming.com | 27.975 | 19.152 | 46,07 |
| Other | scribd.com | 55.354 | 46.804 | 18,27 |
And here the list of loser. There is no one special group of losers like after all the Panda update.
| Domain | SEO Visibility 11/06/2011 | SEO Visibility 10/30/2011 | Percent |
| comcast.net | 283.036 | 367.672 | -23,02 |
| state.ny.us | 151.322 | 204.599 | -26,04 |
| univision.com | 65.720 | 117.392 | -44,02 |
| usmagazine.com | 210.329 | 254.976 | -17,51 |
| newseum.org | 58.367 | 95.132 | -38,65 |
| the570.com | 23.214 | 50.775 | -54,28 |
| americanexpress.com | 109.808 | 132.096 | -16,87 |
| lyricspick.com | 29.360 | 49.287 | -40,43 |
| capitalone.com | 95.609 | 112.678 | -15,15 |
| peoplestylewatch.com | 48.143 | 63.439 | -24,11 |
| realtor.org | 30.849 | 44.230 | -30,25 |
| jezebel.com | 63.698 | 76.736 | -16,99 |
| plentyoffish.com | 30.987 | 43.898 | -29,41 |
| radioshack.com | 41.279 | 54.039 | -23,61 |
| gizmag.com | 41.630 | 54.231 | -23,24 |
| anandtech.com | 37.963 | 50.435 | -24,73 |
| independent.co.uk | 55.691 | 67.858 | -17,93 |
| cpsc.gov | 62.175 | 73.974 | -15,95 |
| nj.gov | 66.367 | 78.117 | -15,042 |
| stylelist.com | 15.038 | 26.766 | -43,817 |
| justinbieberzone.com | 23.903 | 35.292 | -32,271 |
| shoplocal.com | 42.522 | 53.484 | -20,496 |
| hamstersoft.com | 17.740 | 28.616 | -38,007 |
| bncollege.com | 42.925 | 53.543 | -19,831 |
| mbnanetaccess.com | 52.320 | 62.795 | -16,681 |
| blogger.com | 40.172 | 50.426 | -20,335 |
| netscape.com | 42.035 | 52.276 | -19,59 |
So in the end, the update affected really a lot keywords. But it’s different to Panda and the right step for Google to satisfy the need of the user for the best search results.