Two updates, big impacts, but apparently nothing to do?
Google recently made two updates to its Search Algorithm – here’s a quick explanation of what has happened and what you may need to do.
Update 1: The imaginatively named ‘June 2019 Core Search Algorithm update’ is a ‘broad core update’ by Google. These usually happen a couple of times of year – the difference this time was Google alerted us beforehand that it was going to be ‘noticeable’, and noticeable it was, with some major sites being impacted. The website dailymail.co.uk reportedly experienced a 90% drop in their traffic.
The tricky part about this update is understanding what exactly was updated. March’s Core update was easier to understand – if you didn’t follow the EAT (Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trust) rules, traffic took a dip. This time, Google is remaining tight-lipped and maintains that Core Search updates are not about particular website characteristics or searches.
So what to do? Nothing, Google says.
These broad core updates usually mean that website managers don’t have to fix or change anything. If your site has taken a major drop, it would be worth ensuring you have ‘relevant content from the user’s perspective’. However, the Daily Mail’s website drop is interesting, as this EAT rule doesn’t hold true, unless (the most common theory) they are subject to a belief that they produce clickbait, therefore the A in the EAT technique has had some impact.
Update 2: The second update is not actually an update according to Google, rather a ‘change’ called the Site Diversity Change. Although no major impact to the search ranking algorithm occurred, the way site search results display may change, meaning we will see fewer multiple site listings in the search results – so no more than two pages from the same website will show for a search.
This change will not affect all searches, as Google will still show multiple pages from certain sites where deemed relevant. Relevant to the user we assume…
Google’s comment: “Have you ever done a search and gotten many listings all from the same site in the top results? We’ve heard your feedback about this and wanting more variety. A new change now launching in Google Search is designed to provide more site diversity in our results….”
Because certain domains tend to monopolise the search results for certain searches, this update will attempt to even the playing field and vary the choices searchers have on the first page.
Again – no direct action needs to be taken, but you may notice an impact on clicks to your site from searches because of this change.
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