Googles Freshness Update

Google Freshness and a little caffeine.

By now we all know Google Is going nuts with its complete control of the web. Now, on November 3rd, Google rolls out the “FRESHNESS” update. This update as you know by now has affected about 35% of all search terms, more then twice that of Goggles Panda update of about 12% of search terms. These search terms are, for the most part “HEAD TERMS”, according to Rand here at “Whiteboard Friday”.

So what does the website owner do to make sure he/she is NOT getting left in the dust from the Google Freshness update?

First understand what the update is: The freshness update is looking for “Fresh updated unique content. “WARNING!!! If your website has duplicate content you better get to writing. Your website is a sitting duck if you have duplicate content.. The 11-3-11 Google Freshness update stems from the Google Caffeine update from 6/08/2010 05:00:00 PM on Googles Blog

Understand, that when you search Google, you ARE NOT, searching the live web, but rather the data Google has indexed, complied, and will receive the results in an order Google has decided based on many factors most relevant to your search “ in Googles’ opine. Most SEO’s knew that with Panda came great change to the search industry, and many prepared for the changes and have settled in, till Freshness hit….

Historical Data, Freshness and Links

Up next, what the masses drool over: link based criteria. Yes, “freshness” isn’t always about the actual content. It can be used to valuate links, too!

Link velocity valuation Includes:

When links appear or disappear.
The rate at which links appear or disappear over time.
How many links appear or disappear during a given time period.
Whether there is trend toward appearance of new links versus disappearance of existing links to the document, etc.

Historical factors can also be used in weighting the links such as:

The date of appearance/change of the link.
The date of appearance/change of anchor text associated with the link.
Date of appearance/change of the document containing the link.
Trust of the document/site where the link resides.
Freshness of the document.
Document site authority.

Now, let’s consider that the above link related factors are but a layer. This is (yet another) reason why people shouldn’t become too fixated with PageRank. There is far more in the world of link valuations. Don’t become myopic.
On the “freshness” side of things, they note a page can become “stale” when the following occurs;
The date at which one or more links to a document disappear.
The number of links that disappear in a given window of time.
Some other time-varying decrease in the number of links (or links/updates to the documents containing such links).

This type of valuation is certainly interesting because it most certainly would be a good way of establishing temporal virility of a page. Two important concepts are link velocity and link decay. Essentially the rate they are created and how quickly that dies off.

What is most important to stress is that historical elements aren’t just about “freshness.” Your SEO (and marketing) programs should always be aware of what we’ve looked at today as it crosses many lines from link building to content programs.

Consider:

Visibility (and indexation)
Attribution
Content changes
Behavioral / engagement
Domain / registrar changes
Changes in link focus
Link velocity and decay

And we haven’t even touched on how they might use it for spam.Many of the noted methods may or may not be in use. Even if we don’t know the weighting of those that are, understanding them is essential to modern SEO Services. Marketing a website today, versus just a month ago has changed. If your an SEO, expect to do a lot more work in the social and PR. arena. Will being more of a social butterfly fix your issues following the Google Freshness update?

NO.

Freshness in the eyes of the 11-3 update, includes, your link building, social reach, follows, tweets, re-tweets etc, and THEIR DATE OF ACTION….

In the words of RAND “SEO MOZ”, if your not content marketing YOUR CRAZY…

Kinda hard to follow the many updates if your not in the trench on a regular basis.. Here are a few links I found useful for the Google Freshness update:

Do yourself a favor… go there and bookmark their blog!

NOW do me a favor! like us and on Facebook, +1 us with your cool new google Plus, follow us on twitter and stay informed…..

Stay tuned more this evening..

Credit Parts to: the Above links sources.