Google Algorithm Update January 2012

As we've described before, Google has taken the previously unprecedented step of releasing a monthly announcement, describing the changes that were made to its algorithm during the previous month. In keeping with Google's policy of not revealing too much, the announcements are fairly general, but it's still a good way of keeping track of what Google is thinking of and working on in terms of its algorithm.

Google January Update

January has seen some minor changes to Google's algorithm, including improving how Panda, (the last named update) integrates with the indexing and ranking systems, as well as other Google products. They've also announced a minor update to last years "freshness" algorithm, and apparently improved its date detection, in order to provide more timeous results. They've also worked on improving the autocomplete function, as well as the "full page replacement" feature which provides search results based on the assumed correct spelling of a word, when the search query has been spelled incorrectly. Finally, they've said that their news blending has been improved as well, making search more responsive to real time trends, and delivering more relevant news results for recent and recurring events.