Do Google Updates Affect SEO?
Every year, Google releases hundreds, possibly thousands of updates to their search console, it is no surprise that some go unnoticed which can make it hard to keep up with the major updates as and when they roll out.
Google has released some sort of update nearly every month this year, some more significant than others, with a core update coming in May and September.
Core vs Minor Updates
With the number of updates released by Google each year, only a few of them tend to be core updates. In 2022, there have already been two Google core updates — the product review ranking update and the May 2022 update — but what is the difference between a minor update and a core update?
Minor updates often go unnoticed and affect only about 1% of all searches. They’re often very trivial and unannounced by Google due to the little effect it has on searches and how common they are. Typically, minor updates can happen a couple of times daily.
Core updates however are a lot more significant. Usually, core updates will be announced by Google as they affect a lot more searches (around 5-10%) and can affect sites ranking on the search results page.
The Effect of Core Updates on SEO
Core updates are designed and rolled out to improve the relevance and quality of search results by shuffling the rankings of indexed pages around. Because of this, core updates can drastically affect SEO for Google as its ranking algorithm changes with each update.
A core update can eliminate a previous positive ranking factor that your website was ranking for. If this is the case and this factor is no longer being indexed by Google, your ranking results will drop. Furthermore, core updates can issue penalties for websites which will further cause your site to drop in the rankings. An example of when this happened was with Google’s Panda update, the whole point of this update was to punish websites with thin content, making them much harder to rank on SERPs.
The New Product Review Update
September saw Google release their newest core update, the product review update. The rollout of this update was completed on the 26th September 2022 and only affects English language reviews.
The aim of the update is to reward high quality product reviews that are informative, insightful and original. Google said it will begin to favour these reviews and promote them in Google search results.
Google have released an article advising what creators should know about Google’s product reviews update.
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