Google Algorithm Updates History (Till Now)

Looking for a list of Google algorithm updates? I have listed all the major Google updates, their date of launch, and the changes that are needed to keep your site safe in rankings.

Acquiring rankings on Google isn’t easy. The top reason being, Google updates its algorithm several times a year. Minor algorithm changes happen almost every day.

Regular algorithm updates lead to ranking fluctuations. These ranking fluctuations make SEO difficult for both old and new domains.

If you wish to rank your website higher in the search results then you should properly understand all the major algorithm updates that Google did until now. You should also know the Google updates that will be launched in the future so that you stay updated.

Here are the top Google updates that have been launched till now:

Google Florida Update

Florida update was launched on November 1, 2003. Florida update removed spammy affiliate sites from ranking. It affected the websites that had keyword stuffing in the domain name. However, some of the legit sites also lost rankings.

Google Brandy Update

Brandy update was launched on February 1, 2004. It changed Google’s ability to understand synonyms. LSI keywords were used for the first time and Google starting ranking websites that used the meaning of several words that had the same meaning.

Google Austin Update

Austin update was launched on January 1, 2004. The Austin update impacted rankings of the website using FFA’s (Free for All) link farms, invisible text, and meta tag stuffing in the content.

Google Big Daddy Update

Big Daddy update was launched on December 1, 2005. This update had a significant change in the quality of SERP (Search Engine Result Page) and aimed to change the way Google handled URL canonicalization like 301 & 302 redirections.

Google Jagger Update

Jagger update was launched on October 1, 2005, and started to punish websites with low-quality links such as reciprocal links, link farms, and paid links.

Google Bourbon Update

Bourbon update was launched on May 1, 2005. Bourbon update filtered spam websites from the SERP, and it also updates the backlinks and PageRank.

Google Buffy Update

Buffy update was launched on June 1, 2007, with this update, some of the websites have seen a good result in the rankings with single word keyword.

Google Vince Update

Vince update was launched on February 1, 2009, with this update Google added trust factor in algorithm and pushes big brands keywords ranking on the results.

Google Caffeine Update

Caffeine update was launched on June 1, 2010, and this update is a new web-page indexing system with better indexing by crawling and storing data more efficiently. Also, with this update, Google is provided up to 50% fresher results on SERP.

Google Panda Update

Panda update was launched on February 23, 2011, with this update, Google is removing websites with very thin, low-quality content from the results. This algorithm update impacted many low content sites.

Google Venice Update

Venice update was launched on February 27, 2012, and this update improves the local results. With this, every user gets better and relatable results according to the location.

Google Penguin Update

Penguin update was launched on April 24, 2012, and this is the critical update launched by Google. In this update, Google penalized the website with spamming. Google punishes any site that has to build paid links or spammy links only to boost Google rankings.

Related: Will You Use A PBN To Build Links

Google Exact Match Domain (EMD) Update

Exact Match Domain update was launched on September 27, 2012, with this update, websites with exact match domain start losing their rankings. This type of site includes an exact match keyword in their domain name to boost rankings.

Google Hummingbird Update

Hummingbird update was launched on August 22, 2013, with this update, Google started serving results more accurately for every query. This update is launched to pay more attention to each word in a query. The goal is to provide results matched with the meaning of the words.

Google Pigeon Update

Pigeon update was launched on July 24, 2014, with this new update, Google aimed to provide more relevant and accurate local search results. It improves their distance and location ranking parameters.

Google Mobile Update

The mobile update was launched on April 21, 2015, and aimed to reduce the website’s rankings, which lacks a mobile version of the page. Also, it encourages site owners to optimize their websites for mobile devices.

Google Quality Update

The quality update was launched on May 3, 2015, and aimed to impact website rankings on the basics of “quality signals.” With this update, the only goal of Google is to demote low-quality sites.

Google RankBrain Update

RankBrain update was launched on October 26, 2015. RankBrain is all about “Artificial Intelligence” and aimed to improve Google’s understanding of the meaning behind search queries by introducing artificial intelligence to the Google algorithm.

Google Possum Update

Possum update was launched on September 1, 2016, this update impacts only ranking of the Google Map results and aimed to improve localization of search results.

Google Fred Update

Fred update was launched on March 8, 2017, and this update is about devoting “Black hat SEO” practices. Aimed to reduce the ranking of websites with thin, heavy-affiliate, and usage of lots of ads under content.

Google Snippet Length Increase Update

Snippet Length Increase update was launched on November 30, 2017, and changed added a new meta description limit – up to 300 characters from the previous 155 characters.

Google Brackets Update

Brackets update was launched on March 8, 2018, and this update is only focused on content quality, the impact of this update is on “Rich Snippets,” many websites loses their rich snippet ranking on SERP.

Google Video Carousels Update

Video Carousels update was launched on March 8, 2018, and aimed to move the old way of showing videos in search results into a dedicated video carousel. After this update, users saw a new section of videos known as “video carousel.”

Google Speed Update

Speed update was launched on July 9, 2018, and aimed to increase the ranking of websites having a good loading speed. With this update, many slow sites lose their rankings.

Google Medic Update

Medic update was launched on August 1, 2018, and this update is mainly focused on the Health industry. It affects the organic ranking of health & medical websites.

Google Site Diversity Update

Site Diversity update was launched on June 6, 2019, and aims to improve search results where sites had more than two organic listings. In simple words, Google will no longer display over two results of the same website on the SERP.

Google Bert Update

Bert update was launched on October 25, 2019, and aimed to improve the search results of long queries and display more relevant results to the user. BERT has rolled out more than 70 languages ​​worldwide

Google Featured Snippet Update

Featured Snippet was launched on January 22, 2020, and describes that featured snippet position results will no longer be repeated in the rest of the 1st-page organic listings. No feature snippet result can be repeated in other positions.

Google May Core Update

May Core update was launched on May 4, 2020, and aimed to improve search results on the web. And it also focused on the user intent behind the search query.