Take a guess at how many changes Google made to its search engine last year…
20?
50?
100?
Try 1,653!!!
That is what Google’s updated How Search Works website says, and works out to an average of more than 4 updates a day!
In addition to the those 1,653 updates, Google also did 130,336 Search Quality Tests, 18,015 Side-by-side Experiments and 9,800 Live Traffic Experiments.
The How Search Works website provides lots of other interesting behind the scenes info about Google. I encourage you to check it out.
Search Engines are Constantly Change, Are You?
My big takeaway from this is that Google continues to change at a very rapid rate. One of the biggest SEO myths is that a website can be optimized for search once and then its search rankings should be good for the long haul. Nothing could be further from the truth, so don’t fall for quick fix or one-and-done SEO service.
SEO is an ongoing project, not set-it-and-forget-it. -Rebecca Lieb
This is why we don’t even offer 1-time SEO services. All of our Christian SEO and church SEO services include ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Â The number of times this has prevented one of our clients’ search rankings from completely tanking are too numerous to count.
What do you think?
- Are you surprised by the number of updates Google made last year?
- Do you have a plan for ongoing monitoring of your website, search rankings and search engines, and making necessary optimization changes? If so, what does it look like?
i knew that google has made some changes but didn’t know how much, that is why i am Surprised. You are doing a great work Paul. Thanks for sharing this useful information.
Hi Paul, does google make changes to its search engine every day? 🙂
The report doesn’t say, but with 1600+ in 365 days it’s safe to say most days there is at least one change.
Got it, thank you Paul 🙂
Hi Paul,
Do you think in the future Google will replace web by an app that users can find anything with voice? Anyway, this is a great post. My website lost much traffic just some month ago, after Fred update.
Google, Apple and Amazon already have assistants that allow you to search by voice. They won’t replace the web or text search engines, though, they will continue to be another option for those who don’t have a screen handy.
Good question 🙂
Hi Kathy, how about your site now? Does it get more traffic again?
What should we do if our site rank down?
Hi Robby, I recommend a comprehensive SEO audit to determine the cause of the lower rankings.
Hi Paul, thanks for your kind reply, might I know is there any tool or service for the comprehensive SEO audit? 🙂 Thanks much 🙂
Hi Robby, I don’t think there is one specific tool that provides a comprehensive SEO audit. Most SEO companies provide this as a service. When we do SEO audits we use Screaming Frog, Advanced Web Rankings, seositecheckup.com, Moz, opensiteexplorer.org, Google Search Console and our own analysis of the data provided by these tools.
WOW Paul 🙂 Thank you for your great reply, very useful and professional, I will test these tools and service, thanks again, you are the expert of SEO. 🙂
Problem is.. google is constantly updating it’s algorithms, SEO is changing. I’m not surprised if this year will double last year’s changes.
This year the changes have been so many and caused sites to lose their ranking
But keep in mind, for every site that sees their search rankings drop, there is one that sees its search rankings rise.