Google algorithm archives

Google Discover offers users a different way to search. Actually, it’s not really a search in a traditional sense — it’s a queryless discovery of content that fits your preferences and interests. It suggests new content based on your search activity and interaction with the Discover app. And it learns what you like, so it …

It’s probably no secret that the search results for many topics on Google don’t give you the best results. Many topics are highjacked by high-paying ad buyers and companies with big budgets to write over-optimized SEO content at the expense of readability and user experience. The result is frustration for the searcher. Google is aware …

In May 2020, Google announced Web Vitals — a new set of metrics to measure websites’ speed and user experience. Sometime later, Google announced that these metrics would make their way into a core algorithm update as new ways of judging and ranking sites based on the page experience they offer. This update was gradually …

Want to know how to rank high in Google? You’re not the only one. “Could you please write a post with a clear path on just what to do to rank high in Google?”, “What should I do to make sure I’ll outrank my competition?”, “Could you write a clear, step-by-step to-do list on how …

Google keeps getting better at handling near me searches. Needless to say, mobile is the de facto way for most people to search for businesses and products — especially while out and about. Location-based ‘everything’ needs to be considered while optimizing the mobile and local SEO for location-dependent businesses. Google is stepping up its game …

Indexing is an important part of what a search engine does. Without indexing, all the pages Googlebot crawls don’t have a place to live — and the ranking systems don’t have the input they need to do their work. If Google can’t index your site it can’t appear in the search results. The basics of …

Google has made changes to the way they show page titles in the organic search results and the SEO community is up in arms. But that’s not all that happened this month. There was lots of SEO news in August 2021 and as usual, our resident experts Joost and Jono discussed all of it in …

It’s been a busy month for SEO news! We’ve had lots of Google updates and the start of the Page experience rollout. Plus loads of new Google Business and Shopping features — is Google the new high street? Finally, don’t miss our first look at WordPress 5.8, and a brand new search engine called Brave. …

On yoast.com, we talk a lot about writing and readability. We consider it a very important part of SEO. Your text needs to be easy to follow and it needs to satisfy your users’ needs. This, in turn, will help your rankings. However, we rarely talk about how Google and other search engines read and …

Ranking signals, algorithm updates. One day you have the right number of keywords, the next day it’s too many. It might leave you wondering what Google wants to achieve. Or worrying what all these search changes mean for SEO in the long term. Will that change, too? Maybe you’re thinking about auditing your SEO again, …