In the below article, we have compiled a full list of Google Algorithms, Launch Dates, and Functions that Google has rolled out over the years. If you are looking for a detailed article on Google Algorithms, then keep reading it.
Table of Content
- What are Google Algorithms?
- List of Major Google Algorithms, Launch Date and Functions:
- Major Google Algorithms Updates:
- Major Google Algorithm Updates 2023
- Major Google Algorithm Updates 2022
- Major Google Algorithm Updates 2021
- Major Google Algorithm Updates 2020
- Major Google Algorithm Updates 2019
- Major Google Algorithm Updates 2018
- First Google Algorithm Updates
Google Algorithms are used to give the best possible outcome or result whenever someone searches for something on Google. Not only one but it uses several algorithms to perform this task and it also checks for the rank of the web pages which is delivered after the task. Google is making a vast change in its algorithm at a very frequent period.
What are Google Algorithms?
The Google algorithms are a set of complex mathematical functions that let Google Search find and rank the relevant results on SERP for a given query. Google search engine use a lot of algorithms and ranking factors to display webpages on SERP.
In the early years, Google didn’t give more algorithm updates, but now Google constantly keeps on improving these algorithms to help users get the best results.
Some of the google algorithm updates are so minor that they mostly go unnoticed, but some algorithms drastically change the SERP, like:
- RankBrain
- Hummingbird
- Panda
- Penguin
- BERT
- Payday Loan Algorithm
- Mobile Update
- Update Fred Pigeon
- Page Layout Algorithm
- Exact Match Domain
List of Major Google Algorithms, Launch Date and Functions:
| Algorithm | Launch Date | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Florida | September 18, 2003 | Targeted pages with thin content quantity and low quality. |
| Big Daddy | September 27, 2005 | It focused on links targeting to a website and quality of that links |
| Jagger | December 18, 2006 | Targeted keyword stuffing and link spamming techniques. |
| Vince | February 28, 2009 | Targeted websites with doorway pages and low content quality. |
| Caffeine | June 18, 2010 | Improved crawling and page indexing. |
| Panda | February 24, 2011 | Addressed low-quality content and thin content. |
| Freshness Algorithm | November 3, 2011 | Worked on freshness of content in SERP. |
| Page Layout Algorithm | January 19, 2012 | Targeted websites showing excessive ads. |
| Venice Update | May 10, 2012 | Addressed keyword targeting in anchor text. |
| Penguin | April 24, 2012 | Targeted websites that had irrelevant or spammy links. |
| EMD (Exact Match Domain) | September 26, 2012 | Addressed websites with exact match domain names and low-quality content. |
| Payday | August 8, 2013 | Targeted websites related to payday loans and other questionable industries. |
| Hummingbird | August 22, 2013 | Worked on understanding natural language processing to meet user search intent. |
| Pigeon | July 22, 2014 | Improved local search results for businesses located within a specific geographic area. |
| Mobilegeddon | April 21, 2015 | Prioritized websites with mobile friendly interface. |
| RankBrain | 2015 | It is a machine learning algorithm that understands the reason behind search to provide best results. |
| Fred | March 18, 2017 |
It targeted websites with spammy back link building practice. |
| Mobile-First Index | March 26, 2018 | Prioritized mobile-friendly websites in search results for mobile devices. |
| BERT | 2018 | It is a machine learning algorithm that helps google understand natural language queries. |
| MUM | 2022 | A machine learning algorithm that helps Google understand the meaning of complex search queries. |
| Bard | 2023 | A machine learning model that assists Google in producing text, translating languages, producing various forms of creative content, and providing you with informative answers to your queries. |
Major Google Algorithms Updates:
The focus of these major google updates was to improve the quality of sites and content that is going to show up on Google.
1. Panda Update
It is one of Google’s official algorithm update. This update was done to reduce the low-quality data because in 2009 after the caffeine update the low-quality data also became part of the search results. To reduce that google make a new update and named its Panda. In panda, the pages were given a quality parameter based on the rating given by humans to the pages. So panda eliminates the low-quality content and promotes high quality and user-friendly pages.
2. Payday Loan Algorithm
This algorithm was released in 2013, cause at that time the spam in Google was increasing. So to reduce Spam websites from Google search results this algorithm was introduced. This was one of the important updates by Google, which targeted Spam queries which were related to super high-interest loans and other heavily spammed queries.
3. Penguin Update
It was launched in 2012, the same as panda this algorithm also used to promote high-quality data in search results and also to not show the spammy content or low-quality data. This algorithm is an extension of the panda which works on reducing the effectiveness of black hat techniques, that were used to promote the low-quality pages in the search results of Google. The main task of the penguin algorithm was to show the relevant, real, and genuine result websites, and the spam my websites were downgraded.
4. Hummingbird Update
This update was launched on 22 August 2013, its main work is to show the query that query on the internet which may not have the same word. It mainly focuses on the intention of the searcher. So hummingbird algorithm is important because sometimes grammatical mistakes occur during typing and results did not show up so this was corrected by using this algorithm.
5. Mobile Update
As the name suggests this algorithm is for mobile search, its task is to show the Mobile-friendly pages on the top when searched from a mobile. This was launched on 21 st April 2015. The top results will be mobile optimized, and those who are not optimized will be downgraded.
6. Rank Brain
It is a machine learning algorithm. It is kind of similar to a hummingbird, its a machine learning from which Google understand and shows the best result. It is one of the important algorithms of Google and was launched on 26 October 2015.
7. Possum Update
This algorithm is mainly based on the location, it will show the local result according to the location. The nearer you are to the business address, the more chances that you will see it in your search result, and the result may vary on different locations for local addresses. This was launched on 1 September 2016.
8. Fred
One of the latest updates in Google and was launched on 8 March 2017. Its main focus is to target websites that have less content and more ads or you can say the websites having focus is on generating revenue with low-class content. Small websites and blogs are focused on this update.
9. Pigeon
This update was launched by Google on 24th July 2014 in the US and 22 DEC 2014 in UK, Canada, Australia. This update mainly links with those searches on Google in which the location of the user is mainly focused. SEO is used to show local results in an area. So to rank after the pigeon update focus time and efforts on the on-page and off-page SEO.
10. Page Layout Algorithm
This update was introduced by Google on 19 January 2012. After the release, this algorithm was updated on 9 October 2012 and the last update till now was on 1 November 2016. This algorithm is linked with the user experience. This algorithm affects those sites which have so many extra ads. So here in this algorithm, those sites in which ads force the user to see content, and approximately 1% of sites were affected.
11. Exact Match Domain
This algorithm was introduced in 2012. As the name suggests it works on the exact name and targets exactly what the name suggests. This update was to focus on the exact match of domain despite thin content and the quality of the site. The major weakness of EDM was that the websites SEOs would buy domains with exact match keyword phrases, build a site out, but have extremely thin content with little to no value on them. And it was so easy to do. The result of this update occurred in a way that, non-dot-com domains experienced a more severe punishment than .com counterparts.
Major Google Algorithm Updates 2023
| Month | Update | Date Completed | Key Changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| November | Core Algorithm Update | Still rolling out | Primary goal to better user experience and focusing on E-E-A-T signals. |
| October | Core Algorithm Update | October 19, 2023 | Focus on improving content quality and relevance. |
| September | Helpful Content Update | September 27, 2023 | Focus on identifying and rewarding websites that were creating helpful and high-quality content. |
| August | Core Algorithm Update | September 7, 2023 | Focused on improving the relevance and quality of the web pages shown for search queries. |
| April | Reviews Update | April 26, 2023 | Focus on improving the quality and relevance of reviews in search results. |
| March | Core Algorithm Update | March 28, 2023 | Focused on improving the relevance and quality of the web pages shown for search queries. |
| February | Product Reviews Update | March 7, 2023 | Focus on improving the quality and relevance of product reviews in search results. |
| January | Core Algorithm Update | February 1, 2023 | Focused on improving the relevance and quality of the web pages shown for search queries. |
Major Google Algorithm Updates 2022
| Month | Update | Date Completed | Key Changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| December | Link Spam Update | January 2, 2023 | This update targeted websites that were using spammy or deceptive link-building techniques to improve their rankings. |
| December | Helpful Content Update | January 4, 2023 | This update rewarded websites that were creating helpful and high-quality content. |
| October | Spam Update | October 25, 2022 | This update targeted websites that were using spammy or deceptive tactics to improve their rankings. |
| September | Product Reviews Update | October 4, 2022 | This update focused on improving the quality and relevance of product reviews in search results. |
| September | Core Algorithm Update | September 26, 2022 | This update was a major update that affected a wide range of websites. Google did not release much information about the specific changes that were made, but it is expected to have had a significant impact on search results. |
| August | Helpful Content Update | September 8, 2022 | This update was a continuation of the Helpful Content Update that was rolled out in December 2022. This update further rewarded websites that were creating helpful and high-quality content. |
| July | Product Reviews Update | August 10, 2022 | This update focused on improving the quality and relevance of product reviews in search results. |
| May | Core Algorithm Update | June 9, 2022 | This update was a major update that affected a wide range of websites. Google did not release much information about the specific changes that were made, but it is expected to have had a significant impact on search results. |
| March | Product Reviews Update | April 6, 2022 | This update focused on improving the quality and relevance of product reviews in search results. |
Major Google Algorithm Updates 2021
| Month | Update | Date Completed | Key Changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| December | Product Reviews Update | December 20, 2021 | Focused on improving the quality and relevance of product reviews in search results. |
| November | Core Algorithm Update | November 29, 2021 | Focused on improving the relevance and quality of the web pages shown for search queries. |
| November | Spam Update | November 15, 2021 | Targeted websites that were using spammy or deceptive tactics to improve their rankings. |
| July | Link Spam Update | August 9, 2021 | Targeted websites that were using spammy or deceptive link-building techniques to improve their rankings. |
| July | Core Algorithm Update | July 13, 2021 | Focused on improving the relevance and quality of the web pages shown for search queries. |
| June | Spam Update | July 12, 2021 | Targeted websites that were using spammy or deceptive tactics to improve their rankings. |
| June | Spam Update | July 7, 2021 | Targeted websites that were using spammy or deceptive tactics to improve their rankings. |
| June | Page Experience Update | August 23, 2021 | Focused on improving the overall user experience of websites in search results, including factors such as mobile-friendliness, loading speed, and intrusiveness of ads. |
| June | Core Algorithm Update | June 16, 2021 | Focused on improving the relevance and quality of the web pages shown for search queries. |
| February | Passage Ranking | Still rolling out | Focused on evaluating the relevance of individual passages of text within a web page, rather than just the entire page. |
| March | Recovery | March 29, 2021 | Focused on helping websites that had been negatively impacted by previous algorithm updates to recover their rankings. |
| April | Product Reviews Update | April 26, 2021 | Focused on improving the quality and relevance of product reviews in search results. |
Major Google Algorithm Updates 2020
| Month | Update | Date Completed | Key Changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| December | Broad Core Update | December 16, 2020 | This core update was focused on improving the relevance and quality of the web pages shown in search results. Google did not release much information about the specific changes that were made, but it is expected to have had a significant impact on search results. |
| December | Passage Ranking | January 19, 2021 | This update focused on evaluating the relevance of individual passages of text within a web page, rather than just the entire page. |
| May | Broad Core Update | May 18, 2020 | This core update was focused on improving the relevance and quality of the web pages shown in search results. Google did not release much information about the specific changes that were made, but it is expected to have had a significant impact on search results. |
| January | Featured Snippet Update | June 22, 2020 | This update focused on websites with a featured snippet position. The update will no longer repeat the webpage in Page 1 organic listings if in this position. |
| January | Broad Core Update | January 16, 2020 | This core update was focused on improving the relevance and quality of the web pages shown in search results. Google did not release much information about the specific changes that were made, but it is expected to have had a significant impact on search results. |
Major Google Algorithm Updates 2019
| Month | Name | Date Completed | Key Changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| September | September 2019 Core Update | October 10, 2019 | Focused on improving the relevance and quality of search results. |
| June | June 2019 Core Update | June 16, 2019 | Focused on improving the relevance and quality of search results. |
| June | Diversity Update | June 5, 2019 | Aimed to reduce the visibility of duplicate or low-quality content in search results. |
| March | March 2019 Core Update | March 29, 2019 | Focused on improving the relevance and quality of search results. |
| October | BERT Update | October 25, 2019 | Introduced a new algorithm called BERT, which stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. BERT is designed to better understand the meaning of natural language queries, which can improve the relevance of search results. |
Major Google Algorithm Updates 2018
| Month | Name | Date Completed | Key Changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| October | Medic Update #2 | October 20, 2018 | Focused on websites in YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) categories, such as health and finance. |
| September | Small Google Core Update | October 12, 2018 | A minor core update that focused on improving the relevance and quality of search results. |
| August | Medic Update | August 24, 2018 | Focused on websites in YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) categories, such as health and finance. |
| March | Google Core Update March 2018 | March 28, 2018 | A broad core update that focused on improving the relevance and quality of search results. |
| January | Google DMCA Penalty | February 8, 2018 | Targeted websites that were found to be violating Google’s DMCA policy. |
| December | Google Hummingbird Update | December 26, 2018 | An update to the Hummingbird algorithm that focused on improving the ranking of websites that were mobile-friendly. |
| November | Google Mobile-First Index | November 20, 2018 | An update to the way that Google indexes websites, which now gives priority to mobile-friendly websites. |
| October | Google May Day Update | October 18, 2018 | Targeted websites that were using spammy or deceptive link-building techniques. |
| September | Google Caffeine Update | October 10, 2018 | An update to the Caffeine algorithm that focused on improving the speed and accuracy of Google’s search results. |
| August | Google Exact-Match Domain (EMD) Update | September 6, 2018 | Targeted websites that were using exact-match domain names in an attempt to rank higher in search results. |
| July | Google Payday Loan Update | July 24, 2018 | Targeted websites that were related to payday loans and other questionable industries. |
First Google Algorithm Updates
| Month | Name | Completed | Key Changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| March | Florida | March 11, 2003 | Improved accuracy of search results, reducing impact of spammy websites. |
| September | Big Daddy | September 27, 2003 | Increased algorithm sensitivity to content quality and backlink relevance. |
| December | Jagger | December 18, 2003 | Enhanced algorithm’s ability to detect and penalize spammy websites. |
| February | Vince | February 12, 2004 | Increased algorithm sensitivity to link quality and content relevance. |
| February | Freshness | February 21, 2004 | Improved algorithm’s ability to identify and rank recently updated content. |
| March | Page Layout Algorithm | March 1, 2004 | Enhanced algorithm’s ability to understand web page layout and identify key content. |
| May | Supplemental Results | May 18, 2004 | Allowed additional results from non-top-rated websites for specific search queries. |
| May | Boston | May 26, 2004 | Increased algorithm sensitivity to link quality and content relevance. |
| July | Thematic Ranking | July 12, 2004 | Enhanced algorithm’s ability to understand thematic relevance of web pages. |
| October | Domain Diversity | October 11, 2004 | Reduced impact of multiple websites from the same domain ranking for the same search query. |
| November | Supplemental Results II | November 18, 2004 | Allowed additional results from non-top-rated websites for specific search queries, deemed useful despite not being the most relevant. |
| November | Google Sandbox | November 22, 2004 | Filter preventing new websites from ranking too high until established. |
| December | Hidefiniteness | December 30, 2004 | Enhanced algorithm’s ability to understand the meaning of natural language queries. |
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Conclusion
Google is always adding new algorithm updates to keep SERPs clear and easy to use in an effort to give users the best search results possible.
The ranks of webpages in search engine results pages are largely determined by the Google Search Algorithm or Google Algorithms. For SEO experts, it is extremely important because some of the new algorithms may significantly alter the ranking factors.
Taking a close look at these Google algorithm changes and making the necessary adjustments to your webpage could help you increase your visibility on Google’s search engine results page.
Major Google Algorithms- FAQ’s
Q1- What is the major Google algorithm update 2023?
Google released the Helpful content Update on September 14,2023. This algorithm focuses on improving classifier to find helpful content.
Q2- How many algorithms does Google have?
Google does not publically disclose all of it’s algorithm updates, but they are estimated to be in tens of thousands. Some of the major google algorithms are :
- PageRank
- Hummingbird
- RankBrain
- BERT
- MUM
- TPU
- SPARK
- BigQuery
- TensorFlow
- Chrome Rendering Engine
Q3- How complicated is Google’s algorithm?
Google algorithms are complex mathematical functions that are ever evolving, and with introduction to AI and ML it can be said that they are evolving at much higher speed than a human can comprehend.
Q4- Is Google’s algorithm AI?
Google have showed their interest in AI and ML. They are incorporating AI and ML into their search algorithms, major google algorithms like PageRank, RankBrain, TF-IDF and many more uses AI and ML.
