Google Pigeon is the latest algorithm change to Google’s search engine to date, introduced July 24th, 2014. After its implementation, local directories are receiving much higher visibility in search results.
Specifically, Google is relying heavily on Yelp to provide more information and recommendations, instead of artificially promoting their own resource, Google Local, to the top position as they were doing until now. The new update gives local business a boost and should positively impact your Melbourne Fl SEO rankings.
This change may have been influenced by a recent report from Yelp, in which it accused Google of manipulating the results to deliberately bury Yelp’s pages, even if the users had written “Yelp” as a keyword.
With the new Pigeon update, Google is also attempting to enrich the user experience by improving the use of synonyms in phrases (LSI keywords), the recognition of spelling mistakes, rankings, and the customization of results based on localization.
Google Pigeon, the last in a series of improvements made to Google’s search engine preceded by the Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird algorithms, optimizes both the localization and relevance of results; moreover, it makes it easier to compare between local resources, such as hotels and restaurants. If, in example, the user searches for “restaurants in Melbourne”, Google will now return a much more comprehensive listing of different business to enable a quick comparison and help the user make the best possible choice.
It must be remembered that all these has occurred a short while after Google’s launch of its new version of the Payday Loan algorithm, Google Spam Algorithm, now in its third iteration. While Payday Loan is focused on battling the misuse of some keywords and other features by those trying to artificially increase the Page rank of certain web resources, Google’s Pigeon is focused on understanding better what the user is looking for, and customizing the search results accordingly.
To do so, Google is also extending its use of the Knowledge Graph, a knowledge base built as a graph database, which allows for a much more detailed and meaningful way of processing and classifying information.
Google is also integrating further its maps service, Google Maps, by taking into account both the geolocation of the user and the resources listed in the search results. This way, Google is able not only to rank “restaurants in Melbourne” by their perceived quality, or at least by the rankings and recommendations provided by other users, but to present the user with a list of those closer to him or her.
This new trend in how search results are provided affects both products and services, and takes into prime consideration the opinion of other users as expressed in, among other platforms, social networks. Beyond the aforementioned use of Yelp, Google Pigeon also relies on directories such as the Yellow Pages and Tripadvisor.
In summation, there is another change that will affect user’s experience: Google is now limiting the number of videos that appear in search results, providing only those that are hosted in Youtube. The reason, in this case, is not improving their users’ satisfaction, but to maximize the profits made by that specific platform, acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
So far, Google Pigeon has only been activated in the United States, and is operating only in English. It is still unknown when this new algorithm will be implemented worldwide, as Google is keeping quiet about the issue.
