ON November 3rd, 2011
For “freshness update,” it is an extension of what Google begin last year with Caffeine, an under-the-hood improvement that, among other things, helped Google index content quicker, so results were more realtime. This year, Google also brought out its Panda update, which was meant to decrease the rankings of so-called “content farms” – SEO-optimized entities that critics said filled Google with low-quality results. The change builds on top of its previous “Caffeine” update in order to deliver more up-to-date and relevant search results, specifically those in areas where freshness matters. This includes things like recent events, hot topics, current reviews and breaking news items.
Google used to have a search vertical specifically for the most recent updates at www.google.com/realtime, where it was indexing Twitter updates. However, when the contract with Twitter expired, Google shuttered the site (it now redirects to the Google homepage).
