The Payday Loan algorithm got an update almost a year after it was first rolled out in June 2013. The filter was developed to identify websites that appeared to use spamming techniques to gain an unfair advantage in the SERPs.
Google has always battled against spam with Cassandra, Austin, and Penguin, to name a few. Payday Loan 2.0 targeted spammy queries that involved websites in finance, gambling, and porn industries. It was not merely a data refresh but entailed changes to the algorithm.
The developers mainly improved the technology that detected spam-heavy search requests for queries involving loans, pornography, casinos, and prescription drugs. This algorithm runs separately from other filters such as Panda and Penguin.
While Penguin 2.0 is an algorithm used for assessing a website’s backlink profile and checking whether its operator may have bought paid links, Payday Loan 2.0 focuses on deceptive black hat SEO tactics. One method involves links that are generated by hacking other sites or infecting them with malware.
The update affected queries with a lot of potential for spam. This type of inquiry involved a substantial search volume as well as high cost-per-click or CPC keywords. Payday Loan 2.0’s reported impact was only about 0.2 percent of English searches which merely had a 0.1 difference from when the first version rolled out. However, the figure may be higher for some countries where spam is prevalent such as in Turkey or Poland.
Google continually evolves to keep up with the demands and needs of its users. Before, the widespread SEO practice was to incorporate exact-match keywords for your content to be displayed for related queries. Now, though, it’s recommended to use synonyms and make sure that your key long-tail phrases blend in seamlessly to be relevant for natural language search.
To keep your website afloat even amidst the search engine’s continuous improvements to its system, you must conduct site audits regularly. Here are a few elements you should be mindful of: