We begin two weeks of year-in-review articles with a look at the most popular news stories we covered in 2014.
The clock is ticking on 2014. In a matter of days, we’ll all turn our
calendars to 2015 and close the books on another year. Before we do
that, the editorial team that brings you daily news and features on
Search Engine Land and Marketing Land is going to look back at the most popular content we published during these past 12 months.
If you’re a new or recent reader, you’ll likely find some important
news and commentary that you missed the first time around. If you’ve
been reading our sites all year, you’ll hopefully enjoy a reminder of
the year’s important marketing news. (And thanks for being a long-time
reader!)
Over the next week two weeks, we’ll reveal our most popular columns
(overall, and broken down by topic) and our most shared stories on the
main social networks. But let’s start today with a look back at the most
popular news stories we published in 2014.
Search Engine Land’s Most Popular News Stories Of 2014
This list is based on pageviews, and includes news stories published through December 18th.
Barry Schwartz, May 20: “Is this the softer and gentler Panda
algorithm? From talking to Google, it sounds like this update will be
gentler for some sites, and lay the groundwork for future changes in
that direction.
“Google told us that Panda 4.0 affects different languages
to different degrees. In English for example, the impact is ~7.5% of
queries that are affected to a degree that a regular user might notice.”
Barry Schwartz, May 26: “Google made a slight change to their
logo recently, as a Reddit user posted. The “g” in the latter part of
the word was moved left one pixel and the “l” in the Google logo was
moved down a pixel.”
Eric Enge, August 28: “The primary reason behind this shuffle of
products is Google’s unswerving commitment to testing. Every product,
and every change or innovation within each product, is constantly tested
and evaluated. Anything that the data show as not meeting Google’s
goals, not having sufficient user adoption, or not providing significant
user value, will get the axe.”
Danny Sullivan, September 25: “The rollout means anyone who was
penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge, if they
made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, made alterations to
your site, you’ll know by the end of next week if those were good
enough, if you see an increase in traffic.
“The rollout also means that new sites not previously hit by
Panda might get impacted. If you’ve seen a sudden traffic drop from
Google this week, or note one in the coming days, then this latest Panda
Update is likely to blame.”
Barry Schwartz, October 19: “Publishers hit by the last version
of Penguin — back in October 2013 — have been waiting until now to see
if actions they’re tried such as removing spammy links have worked. If
so, they’re likely seeing some improvement in traffic this weekend. If
not, they have to try making more changes and then waiting until however
long it takes for Google to release Penguin again.
“By the way, for those who tried disavowing bad links, if
you did that within the last three weeks, that was too late for this
Penguin update.”
Barry Schwartz, July 24: “Google told us that the new local
search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities,
including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along
with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction,
synonyms and more.
“In addition, Google said that this new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters.”
Danny Sullivan, February 6: “If you had any doubts over how
Google feels about Russia’s legislation against gay “propaganda,” just
go the Google home page. The company has started what will be a string
of special logos for the Olympics with one that includes a quote
stressing that the official Olympic Charter is against discrimination
and using the colors of the rainbow gay pride flag.”
Danny Sullivan, June 2: “This is a big new integration for Bing,
which last year knocked Google out of Siri. Currently, Spotlight offers a
“Web Searches” option which launches Safari (if you haven’t changed
your default browser), which in turn runs a Google search, as Google is
the default on Safari.”
Danny Sullivan, March 26: “More broadly, while it’s easy to
dismiss all this as some type of SEO squawking, it should be pretty
disturbing to any publisher that Google might fairly broadly decide just
how narrow your site has to be, in order to escape a penalty, if you
have guest authors it deems writing off-topic.”
Barry Schwartz, May 21: “Yesterday, Google began rolling out
their Panda 4.0 update designed to punch low-quality content. That’s
generated both “winners” who have moved up in rankings as “losers” have
dropped down — and eBay might be one of the big losers.”
With just a couple exceptions, the top 10 articles are specifically
about Google rankings, algorithms and search results — which is no
surprise. Last year’s list was 100 percent Google-related, and also
filled with articles about Google’s various animal-related algorithm
updates/filters. If you need a refresher on those beyond the articles
linked above, see our article library to get caught up:
We’ve also compiled a similar list on our sister site, Marketing Land: Marketing Land’s Top 10 News Stories Of 2014: Facebook Layout Changes, Oscar Selfies, CIA Tweets & More.
On behalf of the Search Engine Land editorial team, thanks for
reading us during 2014. Happy holidays to you and best wishes for 2015!
Source Of: http://searchengineland.com/sel-top-10-news-stories-of-2014-211443
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