What are Google's main algorithms?

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In this post we will analyze the main algorithms that Google uses to crawl, index and rank our web pages. Since it is impossible to cover them all in this post, we have made a selection of the most important ones, and we have ordered them chronologically. This post will be updated over time, as Google confirms new important algorithms that affect SEO positioning .

What is a Google algorithm?
These are computer applications created by Google that aim to emulate human moderation of web pages. Based on the data that users provide to Google through their browsing, Google attempts to use them to analyze, classify and order the results of our URLs.

In Google's complex network, there are hundreds of different algorithms, each with a specific task. Based on the information they report, Google weighs the elements with its Coca-Cola formula, and ends up determining which Google searches will show the results for my website, and in what form.

One thing to keep in mind is that Google constantly updates its algorithms. Specifically, it does so every 17 hours, that is, about 500 times a year. Don't worry, you don't have to check this every day, since most of these updates have cambodia whatsapp data minimal impact on their own. You do have to take into account the new algorithms that represent a paradigm shift with respect to what Google valued and that undergo a major mutation (we will now see some examples), and above all you have to be very attentive to the Core Updates, the changes that affect the core of the secret formula.

When there is an update of this type, we see how millions of results change their positions in Google overnight, representing a real headache for SEO professionals, and it is something especially endearing at the doors of Christmas.

Google's main algorithms
We present the list of algorithms ordered by release date, from most to least recent.

2019, BERT . It has an almost human name, and that's what it's all about. The Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (this would be its name and surname), is an open source neural network that aims to understand our natural language , to better understand the context and intention of our search. It is something so complex and expensive to implement at the resource level that for now it is only used in 10% of searches, but it will increase and we will hear a lot about it. A practical example is that if we do a longtail search , and we put a preposition in the middle like "for" or "by", it will take into account what that implies in your search intention, and it will give you the corresponding results.
2018, Mobile First Indexing . Since 2018, what Google sees on your desktop version of the website is irrelevant. It only takes into account what it sees through a mobile visit. If your website is not adapted for mobile, you will be penalized. If you have a version for PC and another for mobile (like m.mywebsite.com), you will have a lower rating. And very important: if you have a website with a lot of content, but you hide it in the mobile version because it looks nicer, then it will not count at all for SEO purposes. The content must be the same, regardless of the device accessed, adapting the content to each screen. It was not until 2023 that Google announced that the deployment of mobile first indexing was complete . 5 years, almost nothing.
2018, Brackets . In this case Google wanted to show us a better smile. This update involved a series of processes to reward websites with quality content, but which perhaps were not carrying out other more technical SEO or linkbuilding practices . A very important aspect is that it has benefited sites that correctly label their content using rich cards ( Rich Snippets ).
2017, Google Fred . This cold algorithm came to better measure the quality and quantity of backlinks , the incoming links from other websites to ours. The objective was to penalize the buying and selling of links, but also content monetization networks, PBNs or the abusive use of advertising on sites (it does not apply to Google, of course).
2017, Google Owl . This change meant a major cleanup of low-quality, fake, or unpleasant content from the SERPs. A step forward from what we now call fake news .
2015, Mobile Friendly . From then on, we learned that Google would begin to prioritize websites that were correctly adapted to mobile devices. Aspects such as responsive web design , page weight and loading speed, CSS and JS minimization, and the prohibition of Flash use began to be valued.