Revisions to Google Algorithms

Because I'm probably new to seo than most of you, what are the signs that Google has changed their SERP algorithms? Do they make any public announcement or is change assumed when rankings getting all moved around suddenly? Is there any tracking to how often the make changes?

Thanks

 

you sort of notice when what you've been doing no longer works, or even worse get punished for it.

ie. spamdexing and such

 

Google will make changes to their algorithm many times per year... daily if they feel it necessary. They don't typically announce a particular change has gone into production. Typically the SEO community will notice across the board changes in rankings for a particular type of page or site...

 

recently i've heard they've put more weight on link velocity thanks to blackhat.

 

According to Matt Cutts Google makes over 300 changes per year. That's just about 1 per day so it's always changing.

 

It wouldn't be any fun if we knew exactly what worked and it didn't change!

 

Google decides when and what to change in the ranking algorithms,

 

Google does not want anyone to know there algo since there are so many that instead of focusing on the content of their site and making visitors happy they instead appease the G. They keep it secret and constantly changing; one of the only ways you can tell if they change their algo is if your position in SERPs changes drastically in other words your ranked 1000 for your keywords then the next day your ranked 1 or the other way around. Of course changes like this can also happen for different reasons other than a change in the algo such as being docked for being on a link farm or being caught trying to manipulate the google bot findings (using a bunch of h1 tags on the bottom of your page the same color as your background filled with your keywords)

 

I expect that G is all over these boards etc to see how close the marketers are to pin-pointing the most effective strategies in high serps. Once we get too close, bam....a major change