Google now prioritizes user intent. " These isolated test cycles were now very important in determining correlation, as daily changes on Google's index were no longer necessarily tied to ranking changes. Atomic Algorithm Splitting As if that weren't enough, in late 2015 Google released machine learning into its search engine, which continued to decouple ranking changes from its standard ways of doing things in the past. As industry veteran John Rampton reported in TechCrunch,
Google's core algorithms now work independently based on what is being searched for. This means that what works for one keyword may not work for another. This division of Google's search rankings has since caused enormous heartache within the jewelry retouching service industry, as conventional tools, which prescribe indiscriminate optimizations across millions of keywords, could no longer work at this macro level. Now searcher intent literally determines which algorithms and ranking factors are more important than others in that specific environment.
This should not be confused with the recent announcement that there will be a separate index for Mobile vs Desktop, where a clear distinction of indexes will be present. There are various tools to help SEOs understand their place in separate indexes. But how do SEOs deal with different ranking algorithms within a single index? The challenge is to categorize and analyze these algorithmic changes by keyword. A technology that solves this problem - and which is getting a lot of attention - was invented by Scott Stouffer, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus. After Google repeatedly tried to hire him,