Google Gives Quality News and Magazine Websites a Boost

Last week there was another core Google algorithm update, and just like the one the previous month, there was no official announcement from Google. A representative from Google did inform the SEO community that the update was not Panda, Penguin or HTTPs, but declined to comment further.

This week, Barry Schwartz reported that the latest search data suggests that the updates have given a boost to news and magazine websites. If this is true, this may be an indication of a new wave of quality improvements that we are eagerly anticipating for 2015. In general, news and magazine websites use professional copywriters who are able to produce a consistently high standard of content.

Google has made some excellent improvements to its search engine in recent years that tackle the problem of spam links and thin content; however, it has still been struggling to rank well-written feature articles above poorly spun content.

New newsworthy content

Marcus Tober from SearchMetrics carried out some big data analysis and found that this update seems to indicate that “new newsworthy content” has benefitted most.

This suggests that Google will now promote business websites that publish relevant and timely news pieces. Many businesses publish regular content on their blogs, but often these pieces become very repetitive and regurgitate topics that have been discussed many times over on other websites.

Most of the sites that experienced a positive upturn are very large news sites, such as Techcrunch.com, Time.com, NBCNews.com and Fortune.com. A more important question, then, is which sites lost ground to allow the big news sites a greater market share?

It may be that many small blogs that are failing to produce updates are being demoted. We need to review the data further to be sure, but it does appear on the surface that this new update from Google makes it more important than ever before to ensure that you are producing highly relevant blog posts on a timely basis.

A previous Panda update penalised sites that simply spin news stories, so do not be tempted to try this method to appear newsworthy. Our recommendation is to hire professional copywriters to produce monthly or weekly blog posts to share important news stories that are relevant to your industry!