In the summer of 2010 Google completed the Caffeine update, which allowed them to rapidly index fresh content across the web. This week Google announced that they had done another major update based on freshness of content to cope with the burgeoning amount of social content available online.
“Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.” The official Google search blog.
The algorithm update can now figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.
Why is this such a gift to PR? The content that is getting better search ranking is mostly PR related:
- Recent events
- Trending hot topics
- News
According to SearchMetrics, the winners in this new search landscape will be news sites or blogs, broadcast sites, and video portals.
If you are already working on your 2012 PR content strategy here are some items that could help you take advantage of Google’s update:
- How and where are you posting your news releases?
- Are you using the social media format for news?
- Evaluate your online newsroom. Does it have RSS news f eeds? Is it connected to your social content stream?
- Do you have an image gallery with a feed in your newsroom?
- Do you have a video gallery?
- Are you using your blog to best effect? Recruit and train a team of writers
- Do you have a calendar section that can be easily updated?
This new update has to be balanced with the recent Panda content updates. Google wants freshness, yes. But they also want quality. To be viewed as a genuine news site you need to be supplying industry news from a variety of sources and authors, not just your own content.
And give yourself another gift for the New Year: Read Rebecca Lieb’s Content Marketing: Think Like Publisher. It will help you devise a better strategy for 2012.
Make your online newsroom a news portal with images, videos and industry news. Post regularly and post great content and Santa Google will smile on you with better search ranking all year long. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
