Yes, you read that right. Google just rolled out another algorithm update. In fact, this is Google's fourth update in two weeks. To sum up the changes, first was Panda Update 20 on September 27th, then the EMD Update 1 on September 28th, next the Penguin Update 3 on October 5th, and now Top Heavy 2 has rolled out, as of October 9th. If you don’t recall the original Top Heavy update, the long and the short of it is that Google will penalize pages with too many ads “above the fold,” also known as Google’s ‘Page Layout’ algorithm.
With all these Google algorithm changes, it’s only natural that Google’s subsidiary, YouTube, would go through some changes too.
Here's the deal: YouTube’s video discovery features previously rewarded videos that attracted clicks, rather than the amount of time a user stayed watching. But when clicks are the only metric being taken into consideration, users simply need a captivating title and thumbnail to be in good shape. But now, users are being judged on hang time, which means they need to pump up the value and optimize for engagement.
This seems like a logical, natural direction for YouTube to move toward. Of course, YouTube isn't just changing its algorithm to benefit users -- its changing it to benefit advertisers, too. In the past, when you saw an interesting thumbnail on YouTube and clicked on it, you could have exited out before an ad even began to play, yet that 'click' would still have counted for the video, contributing to higher rankings. With this new change, however, users will need to actually sit through the ads in order for the video to rank higher. Do you think this was a smart update? To learn more, take a look at the full story here.
Start Today Tip - It's challenging keeping up on all the changes from the major search engines. Make sure you have a trusted source or you are reading blogs that keep up to date with all the updates. You can see Google is going to be updating its algorithms on a regular basis and staying in tune with the changes might mean the difference between getting found and getting lost.
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