Absolute Digital Media Reviews The Latest Google Algorithm Update

The award winning, full service digital marketing company have picked up on a few tweaks and SERP volatility throughout the first week of February, which could be related to an unconfirmed Google algorithm update.

Absolute Digital Media have noticed that the unconfirmed update appears to be targeted at backlinks, PBNs, Penguin and more, but Google have not announced an algorithm update – which appears to be standard procedure. The first week of February appeared to have high levels of volatility in Google SERPs and this was shown across a number of tools.

Google confirmed a Japanese algorithm update at the beginning of February, but SEO experts have noticed a few smaller changes and tweaks in the UK, that are unrelated. It appears that on the 1st February, Google may have tweaked Google Penguin and how it detects and discounts spammy links.

Some of the biggest hit sites that people began to notice were PBNs (private blog networks), some of which people believed were hit with penalties and others simply believing that their sites weren’t working as well. A lot of the chatter came mainly from Black Hat forums, with some comments suggesting that domains were refusing to index, and links beginning to take a lot longer to appear.
On top of this, some believed that their rankings were moving up and down but only slightly.

Ben Austin, CEO, stated that Absolute Digital Media review the latest changes closely in order to keep their practices as up to date as possible.

“One of the most notable things about this possible update was that it was not as disruptive as the update back in January, but we will be monitoring any significant changes closely.”

He added: “It’ll be no surprise to see Google begin to target spammy links more aggressively as they begin to make the switch to mobile first indexing.”

However, this doesn’t appear to have been the only changes that Google appear to have rolled out this month. Less than a week after the link related ‘update’ seemed to hit sites, a second update which appeared to hit search quality began to make an impact. A number of sites also appeared to experience significant fluctuations in the rankings after the update, and this give the impression that it was related to Google Panda. Again, this was neither confirmed nor denied by Google.

Other key ‘updates’ from Google noted by Absolute Digital Media this month include 1 star reviews in local search listings, and also emojis in search results (which were originally dropped in 2015). Once again, the emojis were neither confirmed nor denied by the search engine, and some believe that they were unintentional.

Absolute Digital Media is an award-winning integrated digital marketing agency, who specialise in a range of services including SEO, PPC, social media and more. Assimilating market intelligence with creativity, their aim is to deliver a number of effective, tailored digital marketing campaigns for their clients that deliver results.

For more information, contact 01245 287 864 or email studio@absolutedigitalmedia.com.