SEO
Everything You Need To Know

Google’s Freshness Update was a significant ranking algorithm change that introduced the trend of making the search results more precise and responsive to user intent.
The result of the update was the ability to add time as a relevance measure for search queries. This enabled Google to surface content that is trending, regularly occurring (like a yearly event), or subject to frequent updating (like new product models).
The Freshness Update was made possible by the infrastructure changes introduced by the Caffeine Update, which enabled Google to scale up web indexing at an unprecedented scale, enabling Google to surface the most up-to-date content that is literally up-to-the-minute relevant.
The algorithm update was announced on November 3, 2011.
Google’s official blog post announcement stated that the change impacted about 35% of search queries and noticeably affected approximately six to 10% of search queries.
That is a significant change in how webpages are ranked.
Why Is It Called Freshness Algorithm?
The “freshness” name for this update is directly taken from the official Google announcement:
“Google Search uses a freshness algorithm, designed to give you the most up-to-date results.”
What Made This Algorithm Update Possible
A reason why Google released the Freshness Update was that the new Caffeine indexing system provided Google the ability to process more webpages faster.
The Caffeine infrastructure made it possible for Google to provide fresh results with a higher degree of relevance by using a more granular definition of what freshness means.
Specifically, Google determined that some queries have three different kinds of time-related relevance factors.
The three kinds of time-related queries are:
- Recent events: These are search queries that relate to trending or current events, generally news related.
- Regularly recurring events: Google’s announcement gave the example of annual events, elections, sports scores, TV shows, and corporate earnings reports.
- Frequent updates: These are time-related queries for topics that frequently update but aren’t events or trending topics. Examples are search queries for products that are frequently updated.
Freshness For Trending Topics And Recent Events
Trending Topics
Google shows fresh results for certain queries, particularly if they are trending.
Here’s an example with the keyword LIMoE, which is the name of a Google algorithm:
LIMoE is a keyword phrase that didn’t exist until recently. In the above example, Google is showing the freshest search result.
Recent Events
When the algorithm was released there was no such thing as the Top Stories news section for current events.
Google simply showed news results related to recent events at the top of the search results.
Today, Google will show a Top Stories section when a search query has a recent event type of relevance component.
For example, a search query for Ukraine surfaces the following search result:

The Top Stories feature is shown for recent events that are trending. This is an example of the Recent Events type of fresh result.
Freshness For Regularly Recurring Events
This kind of freshness relates to events that happen on a regular basis but aren’t necessarily trending.
Google used the example of a search query that is related to sports as a recurring event type of search query.
A search for NBA surfaces recent sports scores:

The recurring events freshness type will have to be updated regularly. A sports event will have to be updated on a daily or weekly basis when the sport is in season.
A presidential election recurring event will have to be updated every four years.
Frequent Update Freshness
The third type of freshness is related to search queries about topics that are always updated, like queries related to product reviews.
For example, the Samsung Galaxy phone has been around for many years and has cycled through multiple models.
Ideally, when searching for Samsung Galaxy Review, the best result will be reviews about the latest models.
This is a search result for that search query:

Query Deserves Freshness (QDF)
Google’s Freshness Algorithm update was not the first time Google used time-related relevancy ranking factors.
In 2007, Amit Singhal (then a Google engineer and a senior vice president), introduced the Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) algorithm in an interview with the New York Times.
In a New York Times interview he explained what QDF was:
“Mr. Singhal introduced the freshness problem, explaining that simply changing formulas to display more new pages results in lower-quality searches much of the time.
He then unveiled his team’s solution: a mathematical model that tries to determine when users want new information and when they don’t.
(And yes, like all Google initiatives, it had a name: QDF, for ‘query deserves freshness.’)
…THE QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is ‘hot.’
If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model figures that it is one for which users are more likely to want current information. “
The difference between QDF and the Freshness Algorithm Update is that the QDF algorithm appears to have been more limited in scope and less nuanced than the Freshness Algorithm.
In a Nutshell: The Difference Between QDF And Freshness Algorithm
- QDF was examining if a topic was trending among news sites and blogs.
- The Freshness Algorithm examined search queries to determine if they belonged to one of three categories of queries that required fresh results.
As mentioned earlier, the Caffeine web indexing system, introduced five months before the Freshness Algorithm, provided Google the ability to provide search results that were relevant to the minute.
The fact to remember about QDF is that the 2007 Query Deserves Freshness algorithm preceded the 2010 Freshness Algorithm.
What can cause confusion is that Googlers continued to make references to the concept that a Query Deserves Freshness well past 2010. So even in 2012, Matt Cutts was referencing the concept in a Google Webmaster Video that certain queries deserve freshness.
Nevertheless, they are two different algorithms that were introduced three years apart and apparently did different things, since the technology that made the Freshness Algorithm possible in 2010 (the Caffeine web indexing system) didn’t exist in 2007.
Is Fresh Content Necessary To Rank?
Not all search queries require fresh results. Many search queries are evergreen.
Evergreen, in relation to the information needs of search queries, means that the answer to some queries doesn’t change much, if at all.
An example of evergreen content is a recipe. The method for how to make chocolate cookies stays relatively the same for many years.
Sometimes, there are cultural changes that affect evergreen content, such as a trend to low fat or low sugar cookies, which might change how cookies are made.
But the cookie recipe is still evergreen.
The Freshness Algorithm only kicks in when the search query fits into one of the following three categories:
- Recent events.
- Regularly recurring events.
- Frequent updates.
Myth Surrounding Fresh Content
There is an SEO strategy that recommends changing the date of publication or the modification date every week, month, or year because, according to the strategy, “Google loves fresh content.”
There are even WordPress plugins that will bulk update the post-update dates.
But the truth has always been that the “Google loves fresh content” idea is a myth.
Even three years after the launch of the Freshness Algorithm, Matt Cutts, a Google engineer, was still explaining that freshness is not always a ranking signal.
Matt explains this in a 2013 video where he answers how important freshness is for ranking.
“How important is freshness?
So there’s a little bit of an interesting twist in this question where it’s not just the case that something is frequently updated …in terms of the pages on your blog or on your site, that you automatically should be ranking higher.
So I wouldn’t have that interpretation of freshness. …not every query deserves freshness.
So if it’s a navigational thing, if it’s evergreen content, sometimes people are looking for long-form content or doing more research, then freshness wouldn’t be counting as that much.
…we have over 200 signals that we use and the thing that I would not do, the pitfall, the trap that I would not fall into is saying, okay, I have to have fresh content, therefore I’m going to randomly change a few words on my pages every day and I’ll change the byline date so that it look like I have fresh content.
That’s not the sort of thing that’s more likely to actually lead to higher rankings.
And if you’re not in an area about news, if you’re not in a sort of niche or topic area that really deserves a lot of fresh stuff, then that’s probably not something that you need to worry about at all.
…there’s some content that’s evergreen that lasts and stands the test of time. It might be better to work on those sort of articles…
…if you write about video games, there’s a lot of like topical breaking news, then it is good to try to be fresh and make sure that you have, you know, content that’s especially relevant.”
Who Needs To Rank For Freshness Algorithm
Publishing new content regularly is generally a good strategy for many kinds of websites.
However, publishing up-to-date content for websites on certain topics is especially important.
Websites on topics related to rapidly changing consumer trends, topics surrounding regularly occurring events, and sites about products that are frequently updated require a steady stream of fresh content.
The upside of publishing news and trending content is that it can result in high levels of traffic, sometimes immense amounts of traffic.
The downside is that after a couple of weeks it may no longer be fresh or relevant to the same search queries that triggered the massive traffic when the topic was trending.
The best thing to do is to understand if your content topics fit into one of the three freshness categories and if so, get writing.
If the content topic doesn’t fit into those categories, then the topic is evergreen.
And it’s not a bad idea to have a mix of both fresh and evergreen topics so that visitors arriving for the freshness have the opportunity to stay for the evergreen.
Knowing what the Freshness Update was about is still useful for developing a content strategy because Google today is better able to understand which queries deserve freshness, which creates opportunities for publishers to gain more traffic.
More Resources:
Featured Image: A.Azarnikova/Shutterstock
SEO
Google Updating Cryptocurrency Advertising Policy For 2024

Google published an announcement of upcoming changes to their cryptocurrency advertising policies and advises advertisers to make themselves aware of the changes and prepare to be in compliance with the new requirements.
The upcoming updates are to Google’s Cryptocurrencies and related products policy for the advertisement of Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts. The changes are set to take effect on January 29th, 2024.
Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts are financial products that enable investors to trade shares in trusts holding substantial amounts of digital currency. These trusts provide investors with equity in cryptocurrencies without having direct ownership. They are also an option for creating a more diversified portfolio.
The policy updates by Google that are coming in 2024 aim to describe the scope and requirements for the advertisement of Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts. Advertisers targeting the United States will be able to promote these products and services as long as they abide by specific policies outlined in the updated requirements and that they also obtain certification from Google.
The updated policy changes are not limited to the United States. They will apply globally to all accounts advertising Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts.
Google’s announcement also reminded advertisers of their obligation for compliance to local laws in the areas where the ads are targeted.
Google’s approach for violations of the new policy will be to first give a warning before imposing an account suspension.
Advertisers that fail to comply with the updated policy will receive a warning at least seven days before a potential account suspension. This time period provides advertisers with an opportunity to fix non-compliance issues and to get back into compliance with the revised guidelines.
Advertisers are encouraged to refer to Google’s documentation on “About restricted financial products certification.”
The deadline for the change in policy is January 29th, 2024. Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts advertisers will need to pay close attention to the updated policies in order to ensure compliance.
Read Google’s announcement:
Updates to Cryptocurrencies and related products policy (December 2023)
SEO
SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore In 2024

Most SEO trends fade quickly. But some of them stick and deserve your attention.
Let’s explore what those are and how to take advantage of them.
If you give ChatGPT a title and ask it to write a blog post, it will—in seconds.
This is super impressive, but there are a couple of issues:
- Everyone else using ChatGPT is creating the same content. It’s the same for users of other GPT-powered AI writing tools, too—which is basically all of them.
- The content is extremely dull. Sure, you can ask ChatGPT to “make it more entertaining,” but it usually overcompensates and hands back a cringe version of the same boring content.
In the words of Gael Breton:
How to take advantage of this SEO trend
Don’t use AI to write entire articles. They’ll be boring as heck. Instead, use it as a creative sparring partner to help you write better content and automate monotonous tasks.
For example, you can ask ChatGPT To write an outline from a working title and a list of keywords (which you can pull from Ahrefs)—and it does a pretty decent job.
Prompt:
Create an outline for a post entitled “[working title]” based on these keywords: [list]
Result:


When you’ve written your draft, you can ask to polish it in seconds by asking ChatGPT to proofread it.


Then you can automate the boring stuff, like creating more enticing title tags…


… and writing a meta description:


If you notice a few months down the line that your content ranks well but hasn’t won the featured snippet, ChatGPT can help with that, too.
For example, Ahrefs tells us we rank in position 3 for “affiliate marketing” but don’t own the snippet.


If we check Google, the snippet is a definition. Asking ChatGPT to simplify our definition may solve this problem.


In short, there are a near-infinite number of ways to use ChatGPT (and other AI writing tools) to create better content. And all of them buck the trend of asking it to write boring, boilerplate articles from scratch.
Programmatic SEO refers to the creation of keyword-targeted pages in an automatic (or near automatic) way.
Nomadlist’s location pages are a perfect example:


Each page focuses on a specific city and shares the same core information—internet speeds, cost, temperature, etc. All of this information is pulled programmatically from a database and the site gets an estimated 46k monthly search visits in total.


Programmatic SEO is nothing new. It’s been around forever. It’s just the hot thing right now because AI tools like ChatGPT make it easier and more accessible than ever before.
The problem? As John Mueller pointed out on Twitter X, much of it is spam:
I love fire, but also programmatic SEO is often a fancy banner for spam.
— I am John – ⭐ Say no to cookies – biscuits only ⭐ (@JohnMu) July 25, 2023
How to take advantage of this SEO trend
Don’t use programmatic SEO to publish insane amounts of spam that’ll probably get hit in the next Google update. Use it to scale valuable content that will stand the test of time.
For example, Wise’s currency conversion pages currently get an estimated 31.7M monthly search visits:


This is because the content is actually useful. Each page features an interactive tool showing the live exchange rate for any amount…


… the exchange rate over time…


… a handy email notification option when the exchange rates exceed a certain amount…


… handy conversion charts for popular amounts…


… and a comparison of the cheapest ways to send money abroad in your chosen currency:


It doesn’t matter that all of these pages use the same template. The data is exactly what you want to see when you search [currency 1] to [currency 2]
.
That’s probably why Wise ranks in the top 10 for over 66,000 of these keywords:


Looking to take advantage of programmatic content in 2024 like Wise? Check out the guide below.
People love ChatGPT because it answers questions fast and succinctly, so it’s no surprise that generative AI is already making its way into search.
For example, if you ask Bing for a definition or how to do something basic, AI will generate an answer on the fly right there in the search results.




In other words, thanks to AI, users no longer have to click on a search result for answers to simple questions. It’s like featured snippets on steroids.
This might not be a huge deal right now, but when Google’s version of this (Search Generative Experience) comes out of beta, many websites will see clicks fall off a cliff.
How to take advantage of this SEO trend
Don’t invest too much in topics that generative AI can easily answer. You’ll only lose clicks like crazy to AI in the long run. Instead, start prioritizing topics that AI will struggle to answer.
How do you know which topics it will struggle to answer? Try asking ChatGPT. If it gives a good and concise answer, it’s clearly an easy question.
For example, there are hundreds of searches for how to calculate a percentage in Google Sheets every month in the US:


If you ask ChatGPT for the solution, it gives you a perfect answer in about fifty words.


This is the perfect example of a topic where generative AI will remove the need to click on a search result for many.
That’s probably not going to be the case for a topic like this:


Sure. Generative AI might be able to tell you how to create a template—but it can’t make one for you. And even if it can in the future, it will never be a personal finance expert with experience. You’ll always have to click on a search result for a template created by that person.
These are the kinds of topics to prioritize in 2024 and beyond.
Sidenote.
None of this means you should stop targeting “simple” topics altogether. You’ll always be able to get some traffic from them. My point is not to be obsessed with ranking for keywords whose days are numbered. Prioritize topics with long-term value instead.
Bonus: 3 SEO trends to ignore in 2024
Not all SEO trends move the needle. Here are just a few of those trends and why you should ignore them.
People are using voice search more than ever
In 2014, Google revealed that 41% of Americans use voice search daily. According to research by UpCity, that number was up to 50% as of 2022. I haven’t seen any data for 2023 yet, but I’d imagine it’s above 50%.
Why you should ignore this SEO trend
75% of voice search results come from a page ranking in the top 3, and 40.7% come from a featured snippet. If you’re already optimizing for those things, there’s not much more you can do.
People are using visual search for shopping more than ever
In 2022, Insider Intelligence reported that 22% of US adults have shopped with visual search (Google Lens, Bing Visual Search, etc.). That number is up from just 15% in 2021.
Why you should ignore this SEO trend
Much like voice search, there’s no real way to optimize for visual search. Sure, it helps to have good quality product images, optimized filenames and alt text, and product schema markup on your pages—but you should be doing this stuff anyway as it’s been a best practice since forever.
People are using Bing more than ever before
Bing’s Yusuf Mehdi announced in March 2023 that the search engine had surpassed 100M daily active users for the first time ever. This came just one month after the launch of AI-powered Bing.
Why you should ignore this SEO trend
Bing might be more popular than ever, but its market share still only stands at around ~3% according to estimates by Statcounter. Google’s market share stands at roughly 92%, so that’s the one you should be optimizing for.
Plus, it’s often the case that if you rank in Google, you also rank in Bing—so it really doesn’t deserve any focus.
Final thoughts
Keeping your finger on the pulse and taking advantage of trends makes sense, but don’t let them distract you from the boring stuff that’s always worked: find what people are searching for > create content about it > build backlinks > repeat.
Got questions? Ping me on Twitter X.
SEO
Mozilla VPN Security Risks Discovered

Mozilla published the results of a recent third-party security audit of its VPN services as part of it’s commitment to user privacy and security. The survey revealed security issues which were presented to Mozilla to be addressed with fixes to ensure user privacy and security.
Many search marketers use VPNs during the course of their business especially when using a Wi-Fi connection in order to protect sensitive data, so the trustworthiness of a VNP is essential.
Mozilla VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN), is a service that hides (encrypts) a user’s Internet traffic so that no third party (like an ISP) can snoop and see what sites a user is visiting.
VPNs also add a layer of security from malicious activities such as session hijacking which can give an attacker full access to the websites a user is visiting.
There is a high expectation from users that the VPN will protect their privacy when they are browsing on the Internet.
Mozilla thus employs the services of a third party to conduct a security audit to make sure their VPN is thoroughly locked down.
Security Risks Discovered
The audit revealed vulnerabilities of medium or higher severity, ranging from Denial of Service (DoS). risks to keychain access leaks (related to encryption) and the lack of access controls.
Cure53, the third party security firm, discovered and addressed several risks. Among the issues were potential VPN leaks to the vulnerability of a rogue extension that disabled the VPN.
The scope of the audit encompassed the following products:
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for macOS
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Linux
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Windows
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for iOS
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Androi
These are the risks identified by the security audit:
- FVP-03-003: DoS via serialized intent
- FVP-03-008: Keychain access level leaks WG private key to iCloud
- VP-03-010: VPN leak via captive portal detection
- FVP-03-011: Lack of local TCP server access controls
- FVP-03-012: Rogue extension can disable VPN using mozillavpnnp (High)
The rogue extension issue was rated as high severity. Each risk was subsequently addressed by Mozilla.
Mozilla presented the results of the security audit as part of their commitment to transparency and to maintain the trust and security of their users. Conducting a third party security audit is a best practice for a VPN provider that helps assure that the VPN is trustworthy and reliable.
Read Mozilla’s announcement:
Mozilla VPN Security Audit 2023
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Meilun
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