Fall evokes memories of crunching leaves under bike tires, homemade apple cider, and hunting for the perfect pumpkin. Needless to say, we love it. However, we are sad to see summer go. In honor of a great 2014 summer, we are going to do a Google update recap. 

Technically, it is not quite fall yet, and honestly, we are going to start in May. So this will be a summer-ish review. Let's start with a quick photo credit. Click to see more Doodles like the one above from Google. 

May

Payday Loan 2.0

Payday Loan 2.0 was an anti-spam update on Google's part. Specially, this is for "very" spammy queries. It was also an international update and affected multiple languages. 

What a strange name for an update, you may be thinking, but it is actually spot on. Porn, payday loans, cash now, and all other sites that had the potential to get spammy were impacted by this. Your average web master did not have much to fear. 

Panda 

We are beginning to see hints of the content is king mentality rise up from Google. This is great news for those who are tired of seeing sites with great advertising but boring content. However, it flips SEO on its head. What use to be run by links and keywords will now be run by a solid effort to get others to share content. People actually have to be interesting. 

Google’s Panda algorithm is designed to prevent sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results.

Google cleaned up its search with Payday Loan and Panda. You can read more about it on Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, and Forbes. 

June

June marks the start of summer and ending of spring. While we were busting out our camping gear, Google had different plans. 

Authorship Photo Drop 

Previously, if you verified your Google Authorship, your Google+ author photo would show up in search results and link to a Google+ circle. Google decided to only show the author name which may have backtracked countless SEO workers that spent time optimizing the author photos. 

Read more about it on Moz and Search Engine Land. 

July

Pigeon

The famous Pigeon update came along in July to mark the mid-summer fun. Pigeon stirred the SEO waters and had most people talking. 

This primarily impacted local search. Here are some key changes from our blog entree on the update:

• Some keywords are now irrelevant 
  • A lower number of queries that now include a local listing pack on their SERP
• Local rankings will depend more on website authority 
  • Like traditional SEO, domain authority and back links will play a larger role
• Local directories such as Yelp are experiencing rank boast
  • Searchers may not find your website, but they will likely find your Yelp listing
• Local carousel will help you gain exposure
  • There will be heavy emphasis on your listings images and rating, but carousel results will otherwise be unaffected. This may be the best chance for exposure. 

Hear what the experts had to say on Search Engine Land and read about the Pigeon update on Blue Archer's Blog. 

August

Finally we get to August, marking one of the last months of summer but not technically. Fall is not actually here, but the leaves change at the end of the month, and the students go back to school. Summer ends when your rush hour commute increases by 20 minutes due to school buses. 

HTTPS/SSL Update 

Google decided to give a light rankings boost to secure sites. This sounds very fair and also makes the web a tad bit safer. 

Authorship Removed

Google decided that the author photos just were not enough and dropped ALL authorship from search results and web master tools. 

Why would they do such a thing? To be honest, it just was not catching on. Authors weren't into it and searchers didn't really care. 

You can read the history of Google authorship on Search Engine Land and read more on HTTPS/SSL on Google's blog. 

So that concludes our Google summer recap. It will be 90 some here in Pittsburgh, so swimming season is not over just yet. Pretty soon you can enjoy your pumpkin craft beers, pumpkin lattes, fresh cider, and getting way too excited about Halloween. 

For information on beginning an SEO campaign, contact a Blue Archer professional.