Spot the difference?
If you regularly follow our blogs you know we like to keep you up to date with the latest news and changes within our industry. Today we can inform you of another change and in this posting we will look further at what this is and how any impact is likely to be felt.
On Monday 23rd April 2018, Google announced and confirmed something which had already been a suspicion to many people – it was rolling out a new core search algorithm update. The earliest reports show that some people have seen a positive benefit from this change, while others have seen nothing at all. Perhaps more worryingly, some have communicated that they have experienced a drop in their rankings. This will obviously cause alarm bells and uncertainty, so our initial advice would be do watch your rankings closely over the coming weeks.
When Google made their announcement recently, they described this as a “board” update and that these kinds of approaches are normal and usually happen a few times a year.
It is thought that the aim of these changes is so that Google can continually improve user experience and deliver a more satisfying use of the overall search platform. This is reinforced when Google announces that the best advice for webmasters is to continue to improve their own websites meaning they can probably take advantage of a gain in the next review (especially assuming if they have been negatively impacted this time.)
It all sounds pretty run of the mill and like it will all balance in the longer term anyway, but it still doesn’t help or answer a few questions which people would really like to know now – especially if they haven’t come off so good.
- Why do several changes need to be made a year? If this is happening (reasonably) frequently then it can becoming confusing, not to mention that all the new changes simply negate prior changes leading us to wonder why they were ever touched in the first place!?
- If someone has fully optimised their site yet been negatively affected, what does this actually say? Never mind it will all balance in a few months, people will not like the idea of being penalised if they follow the rules or code.
- Speaking of rules (and this is a big one) no one actually precisely knows what makes a website good in Google’s eyes. We have ideas which are obvious and Google have given hints but this is vague when you consider you could be supplied with the pure facts. In terms of this update, what makes it worse is Google aren’t telling people what the changes concern and have even openly admitted that there is nothing a site can do to adapt itself in the slightest way to accommodate these changes. Some would conclude that is hardly user friendly, given that is the whole point of these updates!?
After thinking about this and what it is really trying to say, It seems like a case of ignore the waves and keep swimming anyway because calmer waters are ahead assuming you know how to swim.
If you were in an unknown ocean (in the same way a lot of Google’s practices are unknown) would you necessarily be comforted and happy with that?
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