| Technical Level: | Basic/Beginner | Published: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author: | Nigel Peck | Last Updated: | - |
In this short article I will be explaining what a Google update is and how it affects Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation.
The meanings of abbreviations related to this topic can be found at the bottom of the page.
First a little background about Google. Google is currently the most popular Search Engine (SE) on the Internet. Statistics say anywhere between 50 and 80 percent of searches are done on Google. This is not to say that things will always be this way but for the time being Google is very important.
Armed with this information it goes without saying that any Internet Marketing strategy, whether SEO or CPC/PPC needs to take Google very seriously.
Google works by "spidering" or "crawling" web sites. Once this is done the sites can be added to the Google "index". You can think of the index as being similar to a phonebook, it's Google's (massive) list of pages on the Internet.
Google then performs various operations on the information it has collected and ultimately decides where each page will appear on it's list of results for searches.
The Google update is the time when Google starts using a new index for it's search results.
The Google updates happen once a month at present. It takes a few days and is very important, as it is the time when your listing in Google changes, for better or for worse.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations related to this topic:
- SE
- Search Engine
- SEO
- Search Engine Optimisation
- SES
- Search Engine Strategies
- SEM
- Search Engine Marketing
- CPC
- Cost Per Click
- PPC
- Pay Per Click
- CPM
- Cost per Thousand
Advanced Information
For advanced technical information about Google please see the following articles: