The Mysteries of RankBrain (And Other Tidbits From a Google Q&A)
SEL has a good summary of the recent Google AMA. The short and skinny is:
- Authorship is totally, absolutely dead. Not used by Google.
- Panda is continuous but not real-time. It rolls in waves that take months to fully process.
- Penguin was supposed to be out by the first quarter of this year. There's no date being placed on it anymore - it will come when it comes.
- Gary Illyes says all SEOs should get ready for and study AMP. Curiously, he also recommended that SEOs familiarize themselves with chatbots and automated assistants, too.
- The mobile-only index is coming. It's a big project.
- More data is coming to Search Console.
- 34% of Google's index is HTTPS now.
The biggest item is probably RankBrain. When it came out, RankBrain was a big news item. Google said that it would have a big impact on search rankings, and that it was one of the most important ranking factors. SEOs being...well, SEOs...immediately wondered "How can I manipulate RankBrain to give me an edge?"
Gary Illyes's simple answer is - you can't. "Gary Illyes...explained that you cannot optimize or do SEO for RankBrain. He added there are no 'scores' for RankBrain..." Though it is a ranking factor and has influence. Kind of makes sense to me. It's an "artificial intelligence." Maybe in the future there will be a way to bribe it with virtual milk and cookies :P But not today!
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