Timeline of major Google updates. We don’t go into detail about the rollout of the Panda update which has been ongoing for several years.
| Update name | Date | Category | Effect | Further reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medic | 21/08/2018 | Core updates | Location and organic results affected. Lifestyle, money and health websites largely affected. | https://www.mariehaynes.com/the-august-1-2018-google-update-strongly-affected-ymyl-sites/ |
| Mobile-First Indexing | 26/03/2018 | Most websites moved to mobile-first indexing. Google now crawling most websites as if using a mobile instead of desktop. | https://searchengineland.com/google-begins-rolling-out-mobile-first-indexing-to-more-sites-295095 | |
| Penguin 4.0 | 23/09/2016 | Core updates. Penguin. | Penguin now part of the core algorithm instead of being run at various times. | https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/09/penguin-is-now-part-of-our-core.html |
| Mobile-Friendly 2 | 12/05/2016 | Mobile. | Google boost mobile-friendly sites further. | https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/03/continuing-to-make-web-more-mobile.html |
| RankBrain | 26/10/2015 | Core updates. | Machine learning now baked into the core algorithm. | https://searchengineland.com/faq-all-about-the-new-google-rankbrain-algorithm-234440 |
| Mobilegeddon | 22/04/2015 | Mobile. | Google announce that mobile and web results will now differ. | https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html |
| Pigeon | 22/12/2014 | Local search. | Improvements in local search results. | https://searchengineland.com/google-pigeon-update-rolls-uk-canada-australia-211576 |
| Pirate 2.0 | 21/10/2014 | Core | Downranking of pirate media websites. | |
| HTTPS/SSL | 06/08/2014 | Core | Preference now given to secure sites | |
| Hummingbird | 20/08/2013 | Core | Google replaces its core engine with prior updates now baked in. | https://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816 |
| Penguin 2.0 | 22/05/2013 | Core. Penguin. | ||
| Exact Match Domain (EMD) | 27/09/2012 | Core. | Exact and keyword-match domains no longer given preference. | https://moz.com/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data |
| Penguin 1.0 | 24/04/2012 | Core. | Spammy websites penalised. | https://search.googleblog.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html |
| Freshness | 3/11/2011 | Core. | Sites with up-to-date content rewarded. | https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search.html |
| Schema.org | 02/06/2011 | Google, Yahoo and Microsoft sign up to a uniform approach to machine-readable data. | https://searchengineland.com/schema-org-google-bing-yahoo-unite-79554 | |
| Panda | 23/02/2011 | Core | Spammy website, thin content, content farms and built-for-ads sites downranked | https://www.wired.com/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/ |