How often does Google makes adjustments to their algorithm? In 2018, there were over 3,200 changes, or nearly nine per day. How much do they all matter?
You can read the full article from Dr. Peter J. Meyers on the Moz blog here.
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A great post from Dr. Peter J. Meyers on the Moz blog highlights the annual number of algorithm changes that Google makes. Google sometimes calls them “changes”, other times “improvements”, and other times “launches”. Best we can tell, they all mean roughly the same thing.
Back in 2009, Google made between 350-400 changes. It’s grown steadily each year, and in 2018 the number was 3,234. That’s a ton of changes, but certainly not all of them matter to you.
The number of large, impactful changes is much smaller and we try to highlight them on this podcast for you. The majority of the changes are small new features, UI changes, and things of that nature, and many don’t matter to most of us. For example, an update might affect how Google handles misspelled words in Korean. It’s an important fix, but not one that’s likely to impact me or our clients.
It’s also worth noting that while the 3,234 changes from last year works out to roughly 9 per day, it’s very likely that Google batched the changes into 60 per week or something like that.
In any case, it’s clear that Google is continuing to accelerate their rate of change, and that’s a trend that’s likely to continue. Most changes won’t be big things you notice, but those small changes can add up and it’s important to keep a close eye on things.
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