Every time Google announces a core update to its algorithm, search engine marketers everywhere brace themselves for massive spikes and dips in traffic to their website. Core updates are notoriously volatile, and since Google tends to announce core updates as they’re rolling out, or just before they start rolling out, there’s really nothing we can do but buckle in and see what happens this time.
So when Google announced another core update last month, we all got ready to see major shifts in our website traffic, but that didn’t happen this time. A few websites have seen significant boosts or drops in their website traffic, but for most website managers, this has been the quietest core algorithm update in years.
Table of Contents
- Is Artificial Intelligence the Reason?
- Is This an Infrastructure Update?
- Who Wrote What?
- What Should You Do About the Google Core Algorithm Update?
Is Artificial Intelligence the Reason?
I mentioned in last week’s blog post the fact that Google is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence in their algorithm. Not only does it mean search results are getting more personalized, but it also means that Google doesn’t really have one algorithm. It has many algorithms, each of which looks at different things and combine their results to give users the content that answers their questions.
The use of many algorithms working together could be the reason this latest core update was so mild. If Google just had to make changes to some of the algorithms, the rest of the algorithms would have continued to do what they’ve always done, which might have helped keep website traffic steady.
Google did release a paper in October talking about the fact that, while AI is often trained to do one thing really well, Google is looking to get the most out of its AI by teaching it to complete a variety of tasks simultaneously. Admittedly, the paper was talking about what Google was going to do with its technology in the future, not what it had already done. Still, if Google was aiming to teach its AI algorithms to do many things at once prior to publishing its paper in October, it’s possible that at least some of those efforts affected the latest core algorithm update.
Is This an Infrastructure Update?
Back in 2013, Google introduced an update to its algorithm that had more to do with infrastructure than the qualities the algorithm looked for in website content. Google actually ran the update and didn’t announce it until months afterwards, and they were able to do so because the update was so mild that no one had noticed.
Given the lack of traffic volatility involved in Google’s latest core algorithm update, some SEO professionals are speculating that this is just another infrastructure update.
Who Wrote What?
Other SEO professionals have speculated that Google’s latest core algorithm update has resulted in an increased focus on who wrote a piece of content. That would certainly be in line with Google’s EAT standards, since making sure an author is an expert in their industry has a lot to do with whether the content itself can fulfill the requirements of expertise.
What Should You Do About the Google Core Algorithm Update?
After most Google core algorithm updates, there’s little, if anything, to be done to improve your website’s search rankings after the fact, but that seems to be especially true with this update, since most people have not seen any significant changes to their website traffic since the update rolled out. There’s no data to be gleaned from this update as far as indications as to what Google is looking for when it determines whether a website is high quality, or how it determines which pieces of content to pair with which queries.
This time, my advice is to keep Google’s EAT standards (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) in mind, as well as the factors Google uses to determine each element of its EAT standards. As long as you continue to work on your website with those goals in mind, you should have high-quality leads coming to your website in no time.
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