Google’s Vice President of Search, Pandu Nayak, announced that the company has launched an update for teaching algorithms that keep featured snippets timely, fresh and relevant when a query is asked. This news update aims at understanding useful and timely information. Here is the announcement from Google:
As part of our ongoing efforts to make Search work better for you, a new algorithm update improves our systems’ understanding of what information remains useful over time and what becomes out-of-date more quickly. This is particularly helpful for featured snippets, a feature in Search that highlights pages that our systems determine are most likely to have the information you’re looking for. For queries where fresh information is important, our systems will try to find the most useful and up-to-date featured snippets.
Instances of Freshness In Featured Snippets
Google has some examples of featured snippets which need to be fresh when time goes on. For instance, when you are searching for holidays, you don’t need to view holidays in 2017, you want to view the upcoming dates of 2020.
Or More Precise Information-Or when more precise information regarding a topic is available, Google wants to show the new details. This can come with events which might have shared data and time of the event but is yet to release the speakers or agenda. Here is a perfect example from Google-
Or Recent Calls: Recalls on food, cars, safety issues are also important:
But It Isn’t Flawless
Google acknowledges that it is always improving. Experts verified an example offered by Google in July for a search about best smartphone for product photography. Google still shows iPhone 7, from a story in 2015. Undoubtedly, there are much better quality smartphones in terms of photography out on Thursday, including Google’s Pixel 3 and soon to launch Pixel 4. Google’s Danny Sullivan stated that this algorithm update went live in February 2019.
Significance of The Update
The featured snippets and Google’s overall search results are changing daily. Google is always looking for new ways to make enhancements since Google hasn’t offered the best results and still don’t always offer the best results. Experts believe the best content for query and hopefully, Google’s algorithms will accept your content and showcase it at the top of search results.
