As an SEO Specialist, One thing I always have to be prepared for Google to change rules. In my five years of experience, I have heard Google come up with some of the quirkiest algorithm names. I am sure like me you must have also wondered what they meant. Let’s talk about these algorithm names and what they mean.
1. Panda:
The Panda algorithm was named after Navneet Panda, one of the lead engineers at Google who played a significant role in developing the algorithm. It’s common for Google to name significant updates after key team members
2. Penguin:
The name “Penguin” reflects the algorithm’s focus on cleaning up spammy and manipulative backlink practices, as penguins are associated with cleanliness and order in their grooming habits.
3. Hummingbird:
Google named the Hummingbird algorithm for its ability to be precise and fast, similar to the agility of a hummingbird when it hovers and darts between flowers to collect nectar. This reflects its focus on understanding the context and intent behind user queries.
4. Rank Brain:
While the exact origin of the name “Rank Brain” is not officially disclosed, it likely combines “rank,” signifying its role in ranking search results, with “brain,” highlighting its use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand search queries.
5. Fred:
“Fred” is not an official name given by Google but rather an informal label used by the SEO community to describe unconfirmed updates targeting low-quality content and user experience. The name itself doesn’t have an official meaning.
6. Caffeine:
Google chose the name “Caffeine” for this update to symbolize its goal of providing fresher and more up-to-date search results, much like the energizing effect of caffeine.
7. Vince:
The exact reason behind the name “Vince” for this update is not publicly disclosed, but it is informally used to represent the observed shift toward favoring larger and more authoritative websites in search results.
8. Florida:
The name “Florida” was not officially explained by Google, but it’s believed to have been chosen arbitrarily and unrelated to the update’s function. It’s simply a label assigned to this significant algorithm update.
9. Boston:
Similar to “Florida,” the name “Boston” appears to have been chosen for this update based on its location or timing (announced at a conference) without a direct relation to its function.
10. Big Daddy:
The name “Big Daddy” was likely selected to convey the idea of a major upgrade in Google’s infrastructure for crawling and indexing websites, symbolizing its substantial capacity and capability.
11. Hilltop:
“Hilltop” is not an official name given by Google but rather a concept used to describe an approach to ranking pages based on authority and relevance. The name itself reflects the concept of reaching the “top” sources on a metaphorical hill.
12. Possum:
The name “Possum” is an informal term used by the SEO community to describe the update’s mission to make local search results more diverse and adaptable, much like a possum’s ability to thrive in various environments.
13. BERT:
While not publicly disclosed, the name “BERT” likely represents the algorithm’s role as a “bidirectional encoder representations from transformers” that enhances language understanding in both directions of a sentence.
14. Mobilegeddon:
The term “Mobilegeddon” was coined to emphasize the urgency of making websites mobile-friendly, implying that failing to do so could have catastrophic consequences for mobile search rankings.
Lastly, If you have ever wondered what’s the meaning behind the name Google itself.
Google is named after the word “googol,” which is a very big number (1 followed by 100 zeros). The founders picked this name because they wanted to show that Google could help people find a huge amount of information on the internet, just like a googol is an incredibly large number.
We at DigiChefs are not only adept at working on clients and managing their SEO services. But also very interested in how Google and Search engines work, Hope you found this as interesting as I did.
Comment and share your thoughts on the same.
