I want to know because every time I work hard for SEO, Google changes its algorithm and it hits my rankings.
Constantly, if your rankings get hit every time they change something then you're doing it all wrong.
The turn the dial on the weighting of different factors in the algorithm at least 500 times a year. They factor in new metrics (eg link juice) every day.
Reality. As much as they can. If they could, they would neuter SEO completely so as to force all businesses on to PPC But they cant because they know SERPS preserves their legitimacy as a search engine. You've seen Star Wars haven't you? - Google ARE the Evil Empire.
Google is reported to change its search algorithm around 500 to 600 times each year. While most of these updates are small and often aren't even picked up by users and SEO, every once in a while, Google releases major updates.
This seems pretty accurate to me. Also, let's keep in mind here that it is not just the Google Algorithm that gets constantly updated, so does the Google Index too. Even if no algorithm change occurs, the index is still getting updated. As domains get reported/dropped from SERPs - this will effect your rank too. This will push/pull your listings up/down even if algorithm stays the same.
Yeah they do updates quite a lot, best is to focus on WHITE HAT SEO, do not try to trick google because if they punish you - your website will be ruined.
Google do updates quite often. A major update one in 3 monthes, and smaller updates like twice in a month. But it really depends, mostly on a niche you are working in, whether you will be affected by these updates or not.
Google has to change their algorithm more often because of the flood of bad content and sites that lack content. They used to let most websites regardless of what was on them be indexed but now with the way the internet is growing they are finding new ways to weed out that bad content. I've learned this from experience because I have smaller posts that don't get indexed by google anymore. It seems that if you want to be indexed you at least have to have longer posts rather than shorter and the content has to be quality and copied or rewritten.
now hard to say Also quite interesting They still allow crap site get rank etc Thus I feel give chance for those newbie on doing site