A Comprehensive Guide to the Vince Update
Call it what you will. The Vince Update? The Big Brand Update? Something big happened to Google’s algorithm this year. It hit the US in February and the UK in June, and it’s flummoxed the greatest minds in SEO ever since. Everyone’s tweeted about it, blogged about it, passed opinion on it at various conferences, but every week I see someone blog about Vince who seems to have got the wrong end of the stick. How exactly Google are giving preference to “brands”? In this post I’m going to give a potted history of the best commentary published post Vince, and how each bit of analysis fits together to produce a wider picture of what’s happening with the brand update.
Why I Think the Google / Twitter Deal is a Bad Idea
Clutter
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big advocate of both Google and Twitter, I just think that Google are going down a path that they shouldn’t be right now. In the old days, people preferred Google over other search engines because of its nice clean interface – the homepage looked pretty, with the search box and the two simple buttons. And the results were displayed in a nice clean way – just 10 results.
Weird Google UK Results
So Google UK’s results have been a bit screwy for the last week or so, with a supposed algorithm update taking place. I’ve been keeping an eye on some weirdness happening within the “car insurance” SERP since the update happened:
Google Semantic Search & Orion Update
Long time no see. I had my first snowboarding 3 weeks ago, and I’ve just found it quite difficult to get back into blogging on my return. I’ve also become addicted to Tweeting, so it feels like I’m much more likely to spend my time commenting there than here. Anyone wanting to follow me, you can find my profile here.
So Google have been busy beavering away lately. First they rolled out “Vince’s Change” in the US (it’s yet to hit Europe apparently), then they rolled out the “Orion Update” that saw changes to SERPs last mid-last week, and then on Friday they started testing the Google Wonder Wheel. And all this just as I was starting to feel there wasn’t much happening in the world of search at the moment. › Continue reading
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