What is the Orion update and how will it affect you?
- March 26, 2009
- by Dave Freeman
So why all the buzz around this update? Google makes hundreds of updates each year, most of which we cannot see and sometimes don’t even notice. The “Orion update” on the other hand was instantly visible as the algorithm changes were directly connected to the work of Ori Allon which Google acquired in a race with the other top search engines in 2006.
So what are these Google algorithm updates?
Increased snippet length
For queries of three or more keywords Google will show an extended snippet in the results, the theory and aim behind this is that longer queries are more complex and thus the standard “shorter” snippet may not provide the user with enough detail to make an informed decision as to which site to visit. The longer description clearly provides the user with more detail, however the algorithm will try and provide the user with the most relevant information in the snippet, which worryingly in some cases could actually answer the users query.
In the theoretical cases where the query is answered by the snippet, Google actually becomes the content provider, and leaves the user with the option to click through to the site if they want more detail.
It is so far unclear how this change will affect user behavior, and leaves the questions:
- Will users continue to click through at the same rate
- Will users begin to use more detailed (longer) queries to get the extended snippet
Dependent upon the users screen resolution, what is clear is that the longer snippets will push an extra result below the fold which should in theory concentrate a larger percentage of traffic on the remaining organic listings and most importantly from Googles point of view the paid ads on the right and above.
Also of note is that to produce this longer snippet Google completely ignores the meta description tag and takes the most relevant text from page content. This is directly moving away from call to actions in the organic results in favour of trying to answer the users query. A knock on effect of this is that paid ads will become more attractive by virtue of having the only calls to action on the results pages.
Currently the two questions that I have are:
- Why when I enter a query of three of more words are not all the sites shown in the results given this new longer snippet?
- Is this Google just carrying out a live test before rolling this extended snippet out across all results?
Related searches - content and context
In a brief overview this part of the update concentrates on understanding the users query and returning a selection of related searches at the bottom of the search results pages as shown below for the query “SEO”
In the words of Google, this means:
Starting today, we’re deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).
For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that “angular momentum”, “special relativity”, “big bang” and “quantum mechanic” are related terms that could help you find what you need.
So how does this affect the optimisation of my website?
In short it means that your SEO company should be ensuring that your on-page optimisation is not focussed on one keyword alone, but covers a range of keywords, so that semantically your site/webpage could potentially be classified as relevant for a broader range of keyword variants.
Of course, it’s not just about on-page optimisation, (although in this case it’s highly focussed on content and context aka semantic word relationships) as it is well known that an important aspect of Google’s many algorithmic variants are reliant on links and the link graph of the web, as such the reality is that the results displayed will for now, continue to be influenced by this metric.
3 Comments
DIGITAL MARKETING MATTERS
Luke
1. When it’s possible to show all the user’s search terms in a short snippet, Google will do so. But if the terms are scattered about the page, Google attempts to put each keyword in context, making for a larger snippet.