As Google has released many changes to its search engine algorithms and come down severely on suspicious SEO practices, people are always curious about upcoming changes in terms of SEO. Most people have to settle for speculations as Google is very tight-lipped about future changes it has planned. In this video, Matt Cutts – head of the Google Webspam team, reveals what his team is working on and what people can expect from Google in the coming months.
Matt admits that Google can be very secretive about what it has planned and this is because most of these planned changes may not be released and plans can always change. A small hint at a change can incite webmasters and online marketers to make drastic and unnecessary changes. Before Matt explains the changes that Google is working on as of May, 2013, he explains that if the goal of webmasters is to create compelling and original websites that people want to keep coming back to, then Google’s goals are aligned with that of the webmaster. The algorithm changes that Google is working on will help such sites gain prominence in search results.
What is Google working on?
In this video, all the information comes straight from the horse’s mouth and people should expect these changes in the coming months. As we reported a couple of days back, Google is working on Penguin 2.0. Matt reveals that the Webspam team is very close to deploying the next generation of the Penguin algorithm update, which is known internally as Penguin 2.0. Penguin 2.0 is more comprehensive than its predecessor and is expected to have more of an impact in terms of identifying black hat SEO techniques.
Google is also looking closely at advertorials as the practice of putting paid links in advertorials and using advertorials to boost ranking go against Google’s guidelines. There are many websites that pay for their ads or advertorials with links to their websites to be on other pages. Google is working on preventing advertorials from passing PageRank.
Other possible changes that users can expect in the future
According to Matt, Google is also looking into user feedback and complaints about spammy searches. These complaints are very specific and the issues occur only on Google search engines in specific countries and for specific search phrases. The team at Google is working on making traditionally spammy searches more relevant and clean.
Link spammers need to clean up their act as soon as possible because Google is looking to implement some ideas on going upstream and denying value to link spammers. It is no secret that Google wants link building to be as natural and organic as possible and in the next couple of months, Google could roll out some changes to penalize link spammers. Matt also discloses that his team is working on a much more sophisticated link analysis system, which could be rolled out pretty soon.
Furthermore, the search giant is also working on improving their hack detection systems to detect hacked websites and to inform the webmasters quicker. Matt says that their next generation hacked-site detection system could be released in a few months. Google understands that webmasters can often get confused about hacked sites and malware-ridden sites. The new hacked-site detection system will act as a one-stop shop for webmasters to get more information and help to clean up their hacked websites.
Google to help regular webmasters
Most of us are familiar with AuthorRank and Google’s intentions of identifying authority sources of information by now. Matt adds that the search engine giant is improving its methods of finding authoritative writers on different topics and in different fields. Matt’s team is looking to improve the search ranking of content written by such authoritative figures in the field.
The Panda algorithm updates will be refined and more quality signals will be added to Panda to soften the effect that this algorithm has had on many websites. Refining Panda will help websites that have been severely affected by this update in the past but that have some additional quality signals to work their way back towards their original search rankings.
Users have also complained that when they go about three pages deep in a search result, the search engine often displays a group of links to the same domain. Although Google has already made changes to its search algorithms to prevent this from happening in the first page of the search results, it is now working on preventing such clustered results from appearing on other pages of the search result too.
Matt has a lot more to say about what his team has been working on and what we all can expect from Google in the near future. Watch this video to know more about Google’s upcoming changes.