What’s New with Google Pigeon?

Google recently came out with a major algorithm update that had nothing to do with Panda. They didn’t announce a “pet” name, so Search Engine Land came out with one themselves, dubbing it “Google Pigeon.”

This has to do in light of Yelp recently complaining that Google was ranking Google Local above Yelp, even when someone typed in “Place Name Yelp” where the searcher clearly wanted Yelp reviews. That is all.

Before Google Pigeon:

 

After Google Pigeon:

Search Engine Land explained their reasoning for calling it Pigeon, in that a pigeon has a local homing device inside its brain and Google’s algorithm is meant to enhance “local” home listings for those inquiring about it.

This is an important update in that Google is not showing favoritism. If you add the name of your preferred review site, Google now intelligently does away with its own Google Plus review site in favour of what the person is actually searching for.

To inject some humour, we decided to include the classic Sesame Street clip of Bert doing the “pigeon dance.”