Information and advice about Google Phantom 5, the SEO update of 07/02/17

At the beginning of February 2017, particularly on the 7th, Google made an important update of its algorithm, with big impacts for some sites. In the absence of official announcement, the world SEO talks about the update "Phantom 5" whose characteristics are as follows.

We have already seen several unofficial updates of the Google algo that seem to touch the quality assessment (in addition to Panda): they are grouped in the "Phantom family".

After Phantom 2 in May 2015, Phantom 3 in November 2015 and the 4 in June 2016, here is Phantom 5 in February 2017!

For now I am getting closer to the conclusions of other specialists (eg Glen Gabbe or SearchMetrics ). As with other "Phantom" updates, it seems that Google's algo is getting better and better at estimating the user's satisfaction level.

Here are the ideas of Search Metrics:

  • Phantom focuses on "quality of content (which requires a complex evaluation)
  • The algo works URL by URL: its impact is at the level of individual pages, or directories, but not entire sites
  • Deployment may take several weeks.
  • The big brands are often among the winners (or the losers!), Probably because it concerns a lot the marks requests
  • Sites are often "impacted" by several algorithms or updates, and sometimes as both winners and losers
  • The big changes are often related to trademarks or long head tags ( head keywords )
  • User-related criteria appear to play a role in quality assessment. In particular, the intention of the user is a major aspect.

I suggest you re-read what I explained in 2011: the behavior of the user is monitored by Google , in particular the Internet user who comes from the SERP .

If your site (or your client's site) is too big, it may be difficult to evaluate which pages have quality issues. I suggest you "roughen the ground" by identifying pages that have relatively obvious problems.

This is a crawler that generates an SEO audit report understandable by all, with full explanations and all necessary appendices.


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