Google Vince and Venice: How These Two Updates Changed the SEO Landscape

Most of today’s SEO strategies and techniques have been done to address the updates made by Google. Every now and then, Google would announce updates and tweaks into their metrics and algorithms, to which SEO professionals would respond accordingly. These updates were made to optimize Google’s performance, and ensure that users are getting the best information possible.

While most of these updates would only mean minor tweaks into your SEO campaign, major updates, like Google Vince and Google Venice, have caused major changes that can still be felt today. Here are how these two updates changed the SEO landscape to what it is today.

Google Venice: Going local

Before this update went online, the method that you have to use to track your local search listings is through Google Places. While this was handy method of going through local search results, there are occasions where some search results which add local listings, despite the search terms not asking for it.

This changed in 2012, with the new Google Venice update. This allows your search results to show some local listings based on your IP address, or even your physical location. This allows you to be able to look for the closest businesses and establishments near your current location, which comes in handy when you are travelling or planning a place for a meeting or an event.

This has helped local SEO in a big way, as local businesses are now able to gain more traffic and visibility, which helps them compete with larger and more established businesses. Google Venice also made using Google My Business much more important, as local businesses are able to track their local SEO and SEM through this effective free tool.

Google Vince: Ranking the Big Brands

There are times when even the smallest of changes can have large implications, and this can be evident when it comes to SEO. Google Vince is one of these kinds of updates, as it was able to help the bigger businesses rank up better in search results pages. While this may have been considered by Google to be a minor update, it has caused such an impact that it affected the SEO industry.

This update was meant to improve the search quality of Google itself, and further enforce the value of branding in the internet. This benefited some of the biggest companies, along with government sites, which are seen to have more authority and quality information compared to smaller websites. Despite the apparent dominance of  these brands in search results, this prompted other websites to improve their quality, and create content that is trustworthy and high quality.

The impact of both updates

Looking back, it seems that these two somewhat simple updates have had a significant impact on how search results are being shown on Google. This has helped businesses gain more footing in search rankings, and has helped create websites with better overall quality, and keep harmful and misleading websites in check. In short, these updates make SEO for businesses that much more competitive.

Key Takeaway

Google’s updates have helped create a better search engine that would be able to provide the best results. Google Vince and Google Venice were two such updates that helped establish business websites as pages that have the relevance and authority to be at the top of search rankings.

If you have any questions or inquiries about Google’s latest updates, and SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.