Matt Cutts Tweeted Google Refreshed Page Layout Algorithm

Matt Cutts, search spam head of Google, tweeted on February 10, 2014 that Google refreshed its page layout algorithm on February 6, 2014. However, he did not tweeted how the refresh could affect search results.

Google introduced the page layout algorithm to the web world on January 19, 2012 in order to make its search results more user-friendly. Google introduced the algorithm because it knew very well that its users wanted to see content rich websites, not ads rich websites in its search results and many ads rich websites were there in its top search results that were irritating its users. With the page layout algorithm, Google downed the rankings of those websites in its search results which would aim at showing merely loads of ads on their web pages and not content and upgraded the rankings of those websites which had volume of content with no or a few ads.

Google introduced first change in the algorithm on October 9, 2012. The update affected about to 0.7% search results.

it should not be very difficult for anyone to identify the reason behind the recent refresh. The reason is steer clear that Google wants to improve its search results and for the same, it has refreshed the algorithm.

This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally. That means that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page. If you believe that your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly. You can use Google 's Browser Size tool, among many others, to see how your website would look under different screen resolutions.

Overall, our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus on specific algorithm tweaks. This change is just one of the over 500 improvements we expect to roll out to search this year.