12 years doesn't seem that long but when you look back at it, look how much has changed over the years. This site has been around for 12 years today and the basic purpose of the site has not changed. That being, we bring what the industry is talking about to the forefront of the community by digging into the forums (and now social media) and highlighting that conversation here, so you don't have to. And I do it with consistency - on average five posts per day, rarely ever missing a work day.
I use to do this long drawn out posts on the anniversary of this site, last year, for the 11th anniversary I did not but I did for the 10th anniversary and many others. This time I want to keep it short as well and call out the most important topics of 2015.
Quick stats for you on this site: There are over 21,200 stories on this site, of which I wrote over 18,400 of them or 87% of them. I wrote over 1,700 stories this year alone on this site that had over 15,000 comments (not marked as spam).
We cleaned up our stories in the middle of this year by adding some nicer graphics for them. We also launched native iOS and Android apps for this site, mostly to test app indexing.
Most Important Stories In Past 12 Months:
These are the stories that I'd classify as the most important stories in the past 12 months. They include mobile searches surpassing desktop search, the mobile friendly algorithm, Panda 4.2's slow roll out, not seeing Penguin is over a year, app indexing and more. I hope I did not miss anything huge, but here they are:
- Google: Mobile Search Volume Surpasses Desktop Searches Worldwide
- Google To Bring Mobile-Friendly Factors To Search Ranking On April 21st
- Google Releases Panda 4.2 & You Didn't Notice
- Did Google Reverse The Panda 4.2 Update?
- Google: Those Penguin Fluctuations Are Our Ongoing Optimizations
- Bing To Rank Mobile Friendly Web Pages Better
- Live Already: Google RankBrain; Query Interpretation Using Artificial Intelligence
- Google's Universal Assistant & Ambient Computing To Change Search As We Know It
- Google Core Algorithm Change: Not Panda, Not Penguin & Not HTTPS
- Google Now Rank Apps Without Web Content & Can Stream Apps Without Installing Them
- Google To Show iOS App Content In Index By End Of October
- Google: Get A New Ranking Boost If You Use Our App Indexing APIs
- Uninstalled Android Apps Now Benefit In Google's Mobile Search Results
- Google Now On Tap: Expanding Google Now Through App Indexing
- Bing Building Massive Index For App Indexing Content
- Google Pigeon Algorithm Rolls Out Globally In English Locales
- Google Now Only Showing 3 Local Results Instead Of 7
- Google's Freebase To Close After Migrating To Wikidata: Knowledge Graph Impact?
- Accelerated Mobile Pages For Google Search Coming Soon
- Google: Mobile App Interstitials Ads Can Hurt Your Mobile Rankings
- Google Releases New Hacked Site Algorithm Impacting 5% Of Queries
- Google: If You Repeatedly Spam, You Will See Harder Penalty Actions
- Google Doorway Pages Algorithm & Guidelines Updated
- Google Publishes The Full Version Of The Search Quality Rating Guidelines
- Tweets Come To Google's Desktop Search Results
- Yahoo's New Agreement With Google To Show Google Search Results & Ads
- Bing Signs Ten Year Deal To Power AOL Search
- Google Now Part Of Alphabet, Inc. - No Joke
Most Viewed Stories In Past 12 Months:
Here are the most viewed stories in the past 12 months of 2015 based on Google Analytics:
- Significant Google Search Algorithm Update Yesterday
- New Google Warning: Googlebot Cannot Access CSS & JS
- Wix Web Sites Dropping From Google's Search Results
- Google To Bring Mobile-Friendly Factors To Search Ranking On April 21st
- Google Update Happening? Maybe Panda About To Kick Off?
- Google Penguin Updated Again This Morning
- Google SEO On-Page Ranking Factor List 2015 Version
- Google Releases Panda 4.2 & You Didn't Notice
- Google Core Algorithm Change: Not Panda, Not Penguin & Not HTTPS
- Possible Google Panda Update Over The Weekend?
- Google Slaps Mass Manual Actions For Thin Content Over Weekend
- Google Sending Mass Scale Warnings To Non-Mobile Friendly Web Sites
2016 Recommendations:
Last year I said my one piece of advice was focus on mobile. Google made a huge deal in mid-2015 about the mobile friendly algorithm. In 2016, yes, mobile is crazy important, but I'd say focus on App Indexing (app development) and also do not ignore the AMP stuff Google is doing. If you want to think a few years down the road, look at the ambient computing topic.
As always, I deeply appreciate all the readers here. You really have no idea. Thank you!
