There is some speculation in certain SEO groups and forums that Google has launched a new algorithm that is better than BERT and RankBrain named SMITH. SMITH stands for Siamese Multi-depth Transformer-based Hierarchical (SMITH) Encoder. This is not live, it is currently just a research paper from Google.
Google search algorithm updates
I know I just reported about an unconfirmed Google ranking algorithm update around January 7th and 8th but I think I am seeing signs of another one that started to get noticed January 12th or maybe the day before.
Danny Sullivan of Google confirmed on Twitter that the search company launched the subtopics ranking feature or algorithm in November 2020, just weeks after announcing it at the Search On event in October 2020.
I am seeing some signals and signs of a Google search ranking algorithm update touching down in the past day or so. The chatter is limited but it is there and it is unusual. The tools, most of them, are showing big shifts in the Google organic search rankings.
It is not uncommon to see signals of a Google search ranking algorithm update on or around Christmas. But it is highly doubtful Google would release any algorithm update from Christmas day through New Years. And the signals we are seeing this weekend of a Google update are doubtful.
There has been a lot of speculation that passage indexing is live in the Google search results. I personally have not seen any evidence of that yet but still, I miss a lot of things. I asked Danny Sullivan of Google last night if it rolled out yet and he […]
There seems to be significant SEO community chatter along with most of the tracking tools showing big volatility in the Google search results in the past 24-hours. This comes just a day or so after Google confirmed the December 2020 core update is done rolling out and on the 8th […]
Now that the Google December 2020 core update is officially done rolling out, I am confident to say that it looks like this site, the Search Engine Roundtable, has recovered after being hit by the May 2020 Google core update. I am seeing upticks in Google organic traffic on days […]
Google has finished rolling out the Google December 2020 Core Update on December 16th. It began rolling at around 1pm ET on December 3rd and took 13 days to fully roll out, which is just about the two-week timeframe Google has given us for the core update rollouts.
Google’s Danny Sullivan said that when it comes to Google Core Update, it “is core to all the content in our index,” he said. He said the core update “goes out to the entire index, page by page.”