Google Algorithms’ Significance in the SEO Market

Since the time Google started dominating the Search Engine market in the early 21st century, most of the SEO professionals around the world are obsessed with the term “Google Algorithms”.

SEO experts have a very good reason to be obsessed with Google. According to a research conducted in June 2015, Google has a total market share of 70.80% in the world’s search engine market. If analyzed country by country, Google has a dominating 64.5% market share in the US search engine market, a whooping 95.5% market share in the French search engine market, and most importantly a mouthwatering 97% share in the Indian search engine market. This makes all SEO experts around the globe invest their time, energy and focus to rank better on Google search engine result pages (SERPs)

To understand Google Algorithms better, let us begin by understanding what the term “Algorithm” means in mathematics and computer science language. An algorithm is an independent set of operations being performed step by step. A flow chart can represent an algorithm in a pictorial format.

Google creates these algorithms to provide the user with the best possible answer for their query. For example, when a query is being searched on Google, there are millions of webpages with obliging information. These algorithms which are the computer processes and formulas then take your inquiry and turn them into valuable answers. Google Algorithms rely on over 200 unique clues or signals in today’s date to guess what the user might be really looking for. These signals include the freshness of your webpage’s content, terminologies on your website matching with the user’s keywords, the location and the Page Rank of your webpage.

Google considers a lot of algorithms before displaying results to a user. One of the main algorithm in determining the search results is Page Rank of a webpage. Named after Google’s co-founder Larry Page, Page Rank is an algorithm used to rank webpages on Google. Basically, Google provides a rank to each webpage across all domains. It is measured between 1 to 10 without any fractions and decimals.

Google changes its search algorithm approximately 500 to 600 times every year. Although these changes are minor, sometimes Google rolls out major updates like Google Panda and Google Penguin. This affects the search results in significant ways. As a marketer, being aware of these updates can help them explain the change in rankings, alterations in the organic website traffic, among other things. On many occasions marketers had to abandon their current SEO strategies and practices, in order to get their activities in line with the new algorithm update.

There are times when marketers might suffer from these algorithm updates, but a user never does. That is one quality about Google that I personally love the most, Google is always looking to serve its user base. Providing users quality results is the search engine giant’s priority, and I think that is the reason why Google has been so successful over the years.