Fresh Content on Google

Following on from last year's Caffeine web indexing system, Google have rolled out a 'significant' change to the way search results are ranked.

The change - which will effect approximately 35 per cent of searches - reflects the incredibly fast pace at which information moves on the internet, and has configured the ranking algorithm to tell whether a result is the latest on a subject or not.

However, the new changes are not solely designed to serve up only the latest relevant results; it is also designed to decide when it should give users the most up-to-date findings.

Amit Singhal took to the Google Blog, saying: "Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we're making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 per cent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness."

Google have identified three areas of searches that will benefit from the latest results: Recent events or hot topics; regularly recurring events and frequent updates. Google cited 'occupy Oakland protest' as an example of a recent event or trending topic, explaining users searching these terms will now be returned with the most recent, quality content.

Regularly occurring events - a General Election, for example - will now give results concerning the most recent running of the event when searched. Searches for sport results will also treated similarly by the algorithm.

The final area that the algorithm change will affect is for information that changes often, but cannot be classed as a trending topic or important event. A good example of this type of search would be users looking to buy a new iPhone, who will expect up-to-date information on the latest model. A search for the product will now return the latest details and opinions on the model.

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