At the beginning of June Google announced it was rolling out an update to its core algorithm, which affects the way websites are reviewed and ranked in the search results. While Google make constant changes to how their search engine works, with small adjustments done on an almost daily and monthly basis, the core updates usually work on a grander scale.
After analysing the fallout of this update for the past few weeks, we thought we’d share what we’ve found and summarised the important parts you need to know.
What is a core update?
A core update is when Google adjusts its algorithm to rebalance the factors it deems as important when ranking a website for particular search terms. So where one factor may have been critical to success beforehand, after the update it could be more nuanced in how influential it is to a high ranking.
This is in contrast to a specific update – usually accompanied by a creative name – that address a perceived flaw or particular area of how their search engine functions. Some notable ones include Penguin (which addressed link spam), Panda (which dealt with content spam), and more recently the Medic update which seemed to largely affect websites that deal with health based topics.
June 2019 Core Update – What has changed?
While there have been some fluctuations across the search results that we monitor for our clients, the majority have come away from this latest update relatively unaffected. The one or two clients that were impacted by these changes only saw some marginal movements in their search position, and no one suffered any major drops in ranking or traffic.
On a wider scale, some of the changes that have been reported in the industry include:
- Less duplication of websites in the search results. This is particularly noticeable in some industries where large websites like Indeed or Tripadvisor take up 3-5 of the top ten results. Google has made specific changes to (hopefully) prevent this in future.
- Some big websites were hit – no one knows why. One of the main casualties from this update seems to have been the Daily Mail, prompting one member of the SEO team reporting that organic traffic had dropped by almost 50%.
RankRanger is an SEO toolkit that we use to track the rankings of our clients. Using the data they have available the company put this table together, with figures showing the industry sectors that were affected most by the update.
What do I need to do about the update?
In short, nothing! As we mentioned earlier, none of our clients have been majorly impacted by this update, so there is nothing to worry about. If you are concerned about what this update means or would like to discuss anything regarding SEO and Google, why not get in touch and talk to one of our experts.
