Google has just released a new core update, right in-time for the end of the year – the last occurrence was in May 2020 and further one occurred at the start of the year in January.
By recent timescales Google have been a little slow and late with this one. Normally an algorithm update occurs every few months, but it has taken 7 months for this to now arrive. Perhaps events of the strange year that 2020 has been could be some explanation for this?
As usual if you are interested to see what exactly these core updates are for and the type of things that occur, Google have produced an explanation page. We recommend people read and study this, especially those who have website because some invaluable advice and tips are offered. This could end up changing your web traffic and rankings for the better.
Why do these updates matter?
The updates bring changes and depending on your website it could be positively or negatively affected in the search results. The core updates (and this one is no exception) usually take a couple of weeks to roll out and this has literally only happened recently (3rd December,) so there may be some time for things to filter through before anyone notices anything. Sometimes, (especially at this time of year,) we can regularly be making alterations to websites and it can be hard to tell whether any ranking differences are down to that, the core update, or a combination of the two. Having knowledge that an update is currently occurring can at least provide you with a bit of an explanation and for something to keep an eye on.
What should you do if you think you have been negatively affected?
Sometimes there isn’t a lot you can do. Firstly, and as mentioned above, it can be difficult to precisely claim that the cause of a fall is rankings is attributable to an update. We can infer and strongly guess, but not necessarily accurately know. The added problem is that even if you site has suffered a ranking ‘downgrade’ due to the update, this doesn’t necessarily mean anything is drastically wrong with your website or that you should make sweeping changes. Instead, you may want to go and evaluate your content and ask yourself whether it would be what you want to see as a visitor to your site. Things like the structure, presentation and substantive wording in the content can all make differences. It may be that you find your rankings will increase again between this update and the next one. That is totally plausible and not out the question. If you have followed all these steps and genuinely believe nothing is wrong then hang fire for a while, as you should hopefully notice that this is reversed come the next update, which shouldn’t be too long away!
Do you believe your website is suffering from a penalty and being held back? Visit our Google penalty recovery page, for more information and to find out how we can help.
On behalf of all the team, we would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, with best wishes for 2021!