Google and Ranking
There has been news of two Google algorithm updates that would have a big impact on how Google ranks websites and content. One of them is called Penguin 4.0. It serves to identify sites that try to game the search results in order to boost their own rankings. Penguin, in turn, punishes these sites in search results, getting rid of spammy pages and link networks. Google essentially blacklists these sites and causes a significant decrease in web traffic.
The other update is Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). This will help Google eliminate slow-loading pages on mobile. Google will give preferential treatment to AMP-optimized sites in search results. Thus, brands won’t want to get left behind. Big name sites such as Twitter and Buzzfeed have already started to optimize their contents. AMP-based content will be dominating the search results and non-optimized sites will be outranked by the optimized ones. Web traffic will also be greater for the AMP-optimized sites, which means faster performance and these pages will be more likely to attract a larger audience and keep their attention.
This article relates to this class since we’ve been talking about searching the web, ranking methods, and link analysis. There has been a lot of talk about how Google’s ranking system can be gamed by sites, and Penguin helps to prevent and revert that. The second update also relates to ranking systems since Google will starting including this new update into its ranking method. AMP-optimized sites will have higher scores than non-AMP-optimized sites, which will make them ranked higher. Thus, there is an incentive for sites to convert. Additionally, these sites could also have higher authority scores because more hubs could potentially point to them since they are higher ranked.
http://www.campaignasia.com/article/beware-googles-next-game-changer/430789