Google Freshness Update

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As I’m sure you’ve heard, good rolled out a new Algo update a few days ago, which they are calling the “Freshness update”. According to google this new update will affect 35% of search queries, and is based on their caffiened update. As the name implies, this update is aimed at providing search results which pull the most current information on a topic.

bigG + Twitter = RealTime / +1 + Google+ = Fresh

You may remember last year Google teamed up with twitter to provide “Real time” search results, and this just a couple months ago they needed their partnership with twitter. So before they were grabbing updates form twitter feeds, recent posts, etc. Of course, even when they stopped collaborating with Twitter, users didn’t see a big change in results. Then google publicly launched +1 which moved into Google + – So they now have their own Social Network and real time results to dish out. So who needs twitter?

According to google this will bring Real Time updates back forever (I’m not sure it ever left) – So the concern in the webmaster world and SEO world is that smaller site with a staff of 4-5 editors, can’t keep up with large companies of 50 editors. Now I don’t think I agree with this, but in the SEO world the sky is always falling it seems. But never fear,SEO’s are here (joking obv)

3 Google Freshness Tips For Online Poker SEO

So, I’ve already been getting emails asking:

“what can I do to make sure my site doesn’t get smacked by the new update”

Now first I’ll say that I’ve yet to see any major changes due to this update, yet anyway. But I expect we will see some soon, and we will have webmasters posting impact results from this. So until then, given what Google has told us about the intention of the update. I think there are a few simple things you can do now.

1. Add a Blog to your website – This should be a no-brainer, and most companies already keep a blog of some kind. Google wants freshness, so what better than a blog/news section on your site to keep it fresh. Just be sure to make 3-5 updates a week. These don’t have to be 1200 word articles of awesomeness, but something interesting.

2. Make sure and Time/Date Stamp all your pages – You should be updating pages regularly anyway, but if you have a mostly static website, make sure you have a “Update” or “Revision” tag in there somewhere.

3. Update Your Pages – This sorta goes with the last tip, and again you should always be updating your content, or adding new content. I think we will see the biggest impact to static sites that haven’t had to update their content often. Especially in the uber competitive gaming market, you should be updating pages with the various monthly promo’s, new tournaments, reload bonuses, software updates, etc. There’s no excuse not to be, people want to know the information they are reading is current. Now, so does google.

Also, here is a great video by the guys at SEOmoz discussing the new update and how it might affect everyone.