Alright this one’s a biggie. Remember Google’s Panda algorithmic update? That one only affected about 12% of websites. This one is set to affect over 1/3 of all searches on Google.

Google’s official blog states,

Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.

Google Caffeine–the infrastructure for their indexing system–was completed last year. This is the back-end that made it possible for Google to locate and index a huge amount of content and index it at mind boggling speed. Caffeine didn’t actually change the algorithm though. That’s what Google Fresh will do. This algorithm update will give a boost to 3 buckets of content (via Google):

• Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.
• Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.

• Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

What does Google Fresh Mean for Marketers?

When developing your website’s content calendar, it’s going to be more important than ever to build in time for on the fly content creation. It’s easy to schedule out seasonal material, and evergreen content (stories to have up your sleeve if there’s nothing else to write about). But with Google favoring fresh content even more now, saving time for news and events will be key.

• If you haven’t already, set up an alert system (Google Alerts is easy and free) so you don’t have to run around to tons of different websites trying to mine news content.
• Subscribe to topics on LinkedIn Today and let your news come to you.
• See what people are sharing on Facebook and Twitter–get familiar with stories that are going viral