Google algorithm archives

In April 2021, Google changed how they assess content which ‘reviews’ products and services. The “Product reviews update” made it harder for pages that do little more than “summarize a bunch of products” to rank highly. But, unlike many other Google updates, this one came with a cheat sheet that describes what site editors need …

Google is smart, amazingly smart. The algorithm is very close to reading texts like human beings. At the same time, parts of Google’s algorithm aren’t smart at all. Computers aren’t good at understanding ‘what is what’ on a page. If you have a recipe site, you’ll need to tell Google what an ingredient is, what …

How does Google work? What does Google actually do? For many of you, this will be fairly old news. But for everyone who is new to the world of SEO: let me explain what Google does and how SEO works. In a way that is easy to follow, because understanding this really helps you create …

Some time ago, Google caused quite a stir by announcing a new ranking factor for 2021: page experience. User experience has always been an essential part of building the best site out there, but now, it will play an even bigger role in helping you build awesome sites for your customers. All this is powered …

Google’s new subtopics ranking, a page builder that’s also focusing on performance and a tool to easily rewrite and repost old content. These are a few of the news items that our SEO experts Joost de Valk and Jono Alderson discussed during our SEO news webinar on the 26th of January 2021. Missed it? No …

It’s December, the last month of the year and that means that we’ve also had our last webinar of 2020. In this month’s edition, our SEO experts Joost de Valk and Jono Alderson discuss the latest in Google, Facebook, WordPress and other SEO news. To give some spoilers, you can expect to hear more about …

Another great edition of our monthly SEO news webinar has come and gone. In the November 2020 edition, we opened up broadcasting for everyone — not just members of the Yoast SEO Academy. Joost de Valk and Jono Alderson once again discussed a lot of news regarding SEO, Google, WordPress and Yoast itself. In this …

To get your page to the top of the search results, you need to create content that people are actually looking for. That’s why you need to consider search intent before you start writing. Google is getting better and better at guessing what people want or need when they type in their – sometimes cryptic …

Search is a never-ending story. A search engine is never done fine-tuning the way they get their results to you in a way that makes sense for them and for you. First, Google was all about digging through loads of information to find what you need, but now, AI increasingly helps them make sense of …

Another month, another SEO news webinar at Yoast HQ! For the uninitiated, in these webinars, Jono Alderson and myself, run through the most important bits of news relevant to us and to you. We cover many SEO topics and expand on internet marketing and the state of the web itself. Plus, we’re having a ton …