Google algorithm archives

Recent Google algorithm articles

Google Search On 2020 event: AI improvements for search

16 October 2020 | 2 Comments Edwin Toonen

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 …

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Google Search On 2020 event: AI improvements for search

The latest news in SEO and WordPress: September 2020

1 October 2020 | 10 Comments Joost de Valk

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 …

Read: "The latest news in SEO and WordPress: September 2020"
The latest news in SEO and WordPress: September 2020

The latest news in SEO and WordPress: August 2020

3 September 2020 | 14 Comments Joost de Valk

Every month, Jono and I sit down to discuss the latest news in SEO in a live webinar for our Yoast SEO Academy members. It’s a fun way for us to provide you some of our insights on what’s happening right now. In addition, you get to ask your questions as well, so it’s a …

Read: "The latest news in SEO and WordPress: August 2020"
The latest news in SEO and WordPress: August 2020


Should you optimize your content for questions?

28 July 2020 | 20 Comments Fleur Heesen

Search engines are getting better and better at understanding language. Does that mean they can also understand questions? And what does that mean for the way you should write and optimize your content for questions? We’ll find out in this post! First, we’ll explore how Google understands and uses questions. Then, we’ll go into why …

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Should you optimize your content for questions?

A linguistic approach to creating content that ranks

2 July 2020 | 41 Comments Fleur Heesen

Search engines are trying to understand language: they want to understand what users are searching for, and they want to be able to provide them with the best results. Before I started working at Yoast, I studied linguistics: the scientific study of language. During my years at Yoast, I’ve noticed that linguistics and SEO have …

Read: "A linguistic approach to creating content that ranks"
A linguistic approach to creating content that ranks

Does social media influence your SEO?

16 January 2020 | 32 Comments Marieke van de Rakt

Handling your social media is a necessary part of any marketing strategy, but it’s also a vital part of any good SEO strategy. The popularity of social media has risen and probably will keep doing so. That means Google and other search engines can’t ignore them, and you probably shouldn’t either. You even see recent …

Read: "Does social media influence your SEO?"
Does social media influence your SEO?

Google BERT: A better understanding of complex queries

4 November 2019 | 6 Comments Edwin Toonen

By announcing it as the “biggest change of the last five years” and “one that will impact one in ten searches”, Google sure turned some heads with an inconspicuous name: BERT. BERT is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) model that helps Google understand the language better in order to serve more relevant results. There are …

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Google BERT: A better understanding of complex queries

How to properly delete a page from your site

Whenever you delete a page (or post) from your site, you also delete one or more URLs. That old URL, when visited, will usually return a ‘404 not found’ error, which is not the best thing for Google or your users. Is that what you really wanted to happen? You could redirect that deleted page …

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How to properly delete a page from your site

15 questions about ranking factors – Yoast webinar recap

People are always talking about ranking factors. You know, the secret ingredients to Google’s magic algorithmic formula. If you know them and find a way to please these factors, you’re well on your way to that coveted number one spot — or so people seem to think. In general, chasing all these individual ranking factors …

Read: "15 questions about ranking factors – Yoast webinar recap"
15 questions about ranking factors – Yoast webinar recap