By: Jenny Harrison
This year has seen many major and impactful updates in regards to the algorithms responsible for ranking of organic search results on Google. These changes have been rolled out to increase the integrity, authenticity & credibility of the search results so the user only gets to explore the most relevant piece of Content.
These Google updates undoubtedly have been for the better, where user-satisfaction is prioritized & the demand is always met. What it means for the Content creators & e-commerce Sites is a little different, & it may not always be sunshine & rainbows. The effects involve fluctuations in rankings, traffic in-flow & click-through rates.
Below, we take a look at the complete timeline of major Google updates launched this year & the impact of each change in algorithm on an e-commerce Site’s influence within the search results network:
February- Relevance of secondary keywords
Thanks to a new & refined ‘People also search for’ section, your Website’s Content can still appear even when it doesn’t contain the searched keyword.
This is because, due to the new feature, users who may search ‘living room furniture’ for example, will also be shown keywords that lie in the same ball park like ‘sofas’, ‘lamps’, ‘rugs’, etc.
Utilizing the technique properly, by using various keywords of varied nature in your Content, can even lead to your Web being mentioned twice on the results page.
It should also be noted that such a ‘relevant’ section of closely matching keywords in the search results appear below every URL that you paid a visit to, instead of just being placed at the extreme bottom of each page. This will increase visibility of your Website, if it even qualifies to have a keyword that belongs to the query or topic in some sense.
March- Expansion of featured snippets & downgrade of low-quality Content:
Featured snippets, or also known as ‘results appearing at the #0 position’, have been around for a while now. Keeping faithful to improving the user experience by providing quicker & more relevant results to the community, Google has expanded on these by providing multi-faceted & multi-intent solutions to a single query.
Following the examples provided by Google itself, this approach is aimed at vague & ambiguous questions like ‘tooth pain after a filling’ which could pertain to both: the amount of time it takes for the pain to wear off, or, the reason for tooth pain to exist, or going even further, if a tooth pain can arrive after undergoing a filling.
Thus, related answers are displayed, & if your Website offers solution to any such question, then it will have a decent chance of showing up in the results. This further emphasizes on having a Q&A section on your Web to stand a chance of ranking not just high up, but at the 0th place, just after the paid ads on the results page.
Within the month of February, there was also another update aimed at ironing out any duplicate Content or two pieces of Content showing strikingly similar resemblance. Google now truly values Content that’s extremely relevant to the query & the quality & the effort put into the Content is rewardable.
With such an update, the competition has gotten fiercer, & is bound to get even more so, calling for only the most unique & distinctive Content to make it into the higher spots on organic search results.
May- Data Retention & Compliance:
Data protection has always been a delicate matter & a lot of work was put to ensure the user data was always under protection & secured to the best of the ability. The European Union’s GDPR saw to that matter & soon after Google also tuned its analytical tools to alter the window of time for which data is stored on the platform.
This data retention was increased to a maximum of 50 months before data would be permanently deleted. Moreover, the update allows for analytical data up to 16 months to be viewed via tools coming with platforms like Google Data Studio & Google Search Console, the latter being introduced in early January.
Stored data has always been of much use to any e-commerce portals to learn about patterns & trends of the past in order to correlate these trends to the statistics of performance & success. Viewing historical statistics & analytical data means more useful comparisons between the rankings of the Web & their functionality can be made benefiting your future prospects when it comes to ranking higher in organic search results.
July- HTTP warnings & Mobile page load times:
Google & all other search engines value Site security & encrypted channels over all other metrics when it comes to the ranking & reliability of the Website. For this purpose, updates have been introduced which work into more of the ‘HTTPS pages > HTTP pages’ setting.
In addition to drops in traffic & rating, whenever a non-HTTPS protocol is detected on a Website, a pop-up will emerge from Google Chrome warning the user of the insecurity of the current platform they’re accessing.
MasashiWakui / Pixabay
This will further reduce click-through-rates, increase bounce-rates & will leave your Web’s Content among the lowest of the low when it comes to the search results since security directly impacts the SEO. Thus, it is pivotal that your Online business platform upgrades to HTTPs for staying in the race of organic traffic & rankings.
Especially if you are an e-commerce brand, you must ensure to upgrade to HTTPS like Sophie and Trey, an oOnline boutique, has done; the reason being that, as an Online marketplace, you cannot leave an ounce of doubt in your customer’s mind regarding security.
On July 9, some changes to Google’s algorithm were made, which now reflect in the page load times in mobile & handheld versions of a Website. Since page speeds & load times have always been a valuable metric in determining the SEO score & the ranking among the search results, the update focuses special attention towards mobile devices & the need for Websites to be optimized for those channels as well to provide the best user experience possible.
Additionally, a Page Speed Insights tool was also added to analyse the loading time of a Web page through the URL. So if your Site is just centered around the desktop version, it may not perform so well among the search results.
Mobile optimization has become an essential requirement lately, being closely associated with increased traffic & conversation rates, & now it’s not only restricted to those metrics, but play into rankings & positions on the results page as well.
August -Medic update:
You can just figure out the significance of this update alone by knowing that it’s the only update to have received an un-official, but popular name: The Medic Update. The particular name arises because the update primarily affected rankings of Websites in the medical field including health, fitness & lifestyle.
However, in reality, this was a global core updated which affected almost all fields of the e-commerce tree. For example, big companies known for offering jobs including IBM & McDonalds will now have a ‘Jobs at’ display in the Google search results.
Moreover, commercial Sites like e-bay & Target have received a boost in their traffic. The crux of the update, however, was still aimed at medical Sites & all those related to Google’s search guideline: ‘Your Money or Your Life (YMYL)’.
The Sites & platforms that fall under this broad term are those that perform any of the following tasks:
- Providing advice in the health/medical department.
- Providing advice related to legal & financial matters.
- Providing transactions services.
- Asking for personal information, including phone numbers, email addresses, personal identification number, driver’s license number, etc.
- Asking for financial information, including bank account numbers, credit card info, etc.
Google gives the utmost priority to these particular types of pages since they are capable of having an effect in some way of form to your wealth or your health.
Therefore, with this update, the requirements have gone up even higher, & the Content of such pages should be wholly authentic & should not allow for even a doubtful or unproven statement in the article.
A basic mistake, technical or otherwise, can lead to effects including physical or emotional pain, or financial disasters. Google, in the light of the above points, recognizes the importance of high standards for such a page & will not compromise even in the slightest when the quality is not sufficient or up-to-the-par.
As for the results, there were both losers & winners (but mostly losers) when it came to change in rankings & fluctuations in the in-bound traffic. Thus, if your particular e-commerce Website falls under this category of pages, attention is to be paid to every single aspect & element, including the authenticity of Content, the accessibility of the Web design & UX, handling any advertisements properly & ironing out any SEO related issues. Even lacking in one of these aspects can result in huge drops when it comes to ranking, thus the position on the results page is directly affected.
Conclusion- Preparing for the future & adapting accordingly
Though August marked the apex for when updates truly changed the landscape of how rankings & search results work, Google has revealed updates in the subsequent months like in September to roll-back, albeit a little, the changes or the complete shakedown that the Medic update caused. Since then, things have been quieter & mostly minor algorithm changes have been taking place with each update to date.
As always, there are both winners & losers when it comes to Google changing its plans, with gains and losses in rankings, traffic, click-through rates, bounce rates, etc. In such cases, the company shouldn’t whine about its losses, or rest on its laurels, nor expect an undoing change to occur immediately after, but as Google’s twitter account puts it – ‘There’s no fix’.
The e-commerce portals can build on their success, or improve on their failure, by remaining dedicated & strongly committed to creating Content that’s unique, authentic, relevant & above all, in light of helping the users instead of tricking or exploiting them for valuable metrics of Internet success.
All views/observations in the above article are solely of the writer. This Website may or may not subscribe to them.
Author Bio:
Jenny Harrison is a passionate marketing & business blogger. She loves to engage with readers who are seeking B2B & B2C marketing related information on the Internet. She is a featured blogger at various high authority blogs & magazines in which she shared her research & experience with the vast Online community. Currently, she is associated with PNC Digital, an Orlando based e-Commerce development company that specializes in OpenCart, Magento, & Shopify Web Development.
