What a busy month we had in October with Google core SEO topics, from RankBrain being announced to the new hacked sites algorithm, we saw a lot of changes this past month. We also noticed several potential updates that Google would not confirm. We are waiting on Penguin to touch down by the end of this year as well.

Mobile searches passed desktop searches in Google worldwide. Google launched the app ad interstitial penalty and started showing iOS apps in mobile search results. Let’s not forget the Zombie traffic Google is sending users.

It has been a busy month and now, there is some very early chatter at WebmasterWorld about some fluctuations in the Google SERPs. Time will tell.

Here is a recap of stories I pulled out that I think are important:

Google Algorithms:
Live Already: Google RankBrain; Query Interpretation Using Artificial Intelligence
Google Releases New Hacked Site Algorithm Impacting 5% Of Queries
Google’s Hacked Sites Algorithm Only Impacts Spammy Queries
Google: That May Have Been A Core Ranking Algorithm Update; Which We Won’t Confirm
More Signs Of The Google Halloween Zombie Update
Google Update October 14/15th: ZOMBIE Update Or Panda Rolling?
Google Search Fluctuations & Ranking Changes Chatter Continues
Google: Penguin 4.2 Should Be Real-Time & Continuous
Google: Penguin Update Will Still Happen In 2015
Google: It’s Not Too Late To Clean Your Links For Penguin
Google: Penguin Still Not Ready For Primetime
Webmaster: Google Panda Rollout Moving At Recrawl Rate Pace
Fresh Data On My Google Panda 4.2 Recovery
Google To Penalize Deceptive & Sneaky Mobile Redirects
Did Google Penalize A New Set Of Sape Link Scheme Web Sites?

Google Mobile & App Indexing:
Google: Mobile Search Volume Surpasses Desktop Searches Worldwide
Google: The App Install Interstitial Penalty Is Now Live
Google To Show iOS App Content In Index By End Of October
Google: iOS Apps Don’t Get App Indexing API Ranking Boost
Google: iOS Apps Now Showing In Mobile Safari Searches In Google
Google: Don’t Build Apps Just For Ranking Boost
Google Supports Multilingual Apps With App Indexing
Google Revamping Google Search Console App Content Mismatch Data
Google Has Internal Search Commands For App Content (i.e. site: cache: etc)
Google: 40% Of Searches Return App-Indexed Results In Top Five
Google Search Console: Upload Your APKs For Fetch As Google For App-Indexing
Google Red “Live” Label In Mobile Search Results
Google Accelerated Mobile Pages Project : Will It Last?

Google SEO:
Google: Scrapers Only Outrank Sites That Have Other Search Quality Issues
What’s Up With The Google Zombie Traffic
After Months Of Warnings; Google Kills Their AJAX Crawling Scheme
Google: It’s Not A Good Idea To Build Web Sites On Public Data
Google Confirms They’d Use Rel=Author If More People Were Using It
Google’s Gary Illyes: Make Thin Content Thicker OR Use NoIndex
Google: We Don’t Recommend You Remove Content To Fix Panda Issues
Google: Duplicate Content Issues & Panda Issues Are Two Different Things
Google: Don’t Make A Dynamically Generated robots.txt
Google: We May Make Your 302 Temporary Redirects As 301 Permanent Redirects
Google: Your Site Can Have Both Manual Actions & Algorithmic Penalties
Google: Numbers In URLs Don’t Matter For Rankings
Google: Want Featured Snippets, Try Using Schema Markup
Preview The Google Search App New Features Before They Are Released
Local SEOs: It’s Harder Than Ever To Find Duplicate Local Listings In Google

Google Webmaster & Search Console:
Google: “Not Set” In Google Analytics SEO Report Isn’t A Bug
Vote On The Google Search Console Feature You Want
Google Working On “Sets” To Consolidate Google Search Console Profiles
Google: Search Console To Get More Accurate, Faster & Useful Reports

Last month’s recap can be found here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.