Google normally allots about two weeks for a core update to rollout, but they usually finish before Day 14. This time around, they needed the full 14 days, which indicates this one is a doozey.
Another indication of just how big this rollout was the number of sites that experienced significant ranking volatility.
Table of Contents
- Why Should We Care About Core Updates?
- Why Do We Have Core Updates?
- What Does Google Consider to Be Spam?
- A Few Interesting Things to Note
- What Does This Mean for Your SEO Strategy?
Why Should We Care About Core Updates?
As SEO professionals, we all like to keep an eye on our website traffic because (in theory) it should be an indication of what we’re doing well and when we need to change course. But when a core update comes along, your site could go dramatically up or down (or both up and down alternately) even if you changed nothing in your SEO strategy.
This is one of the reasons we like to keep track of core updates. It’s important to know when you’re playing the game right, when you can improve your game, and when Google changes the rules of the game.
Why Do We Have Core Updates?
Google’s only goal is to help people find high-quality content that answers their questions. Ideally, if you keep producing high-quality content that answers your target audience’s questions, you should have no problem. That said, we don’t live in an ideal world and Google sometimes makes changes that don’t appear to make any sense to us mere mortals.
With that disclaimer behind us, let’s talk about Google’s goals with their latest update. It’s being called the spam update because the goal is to downgrade or even eliminate spam content.
What Does Google Consider to Be Spam?
If your website has seen a sudden drop in rankings, or if you want to know how to avoid getting punished for publishing spammy content on your website, it can help to know what Google considers spammy content.
Content that is:
- Thin
- Misleading
- Overly promotional
- Duplicate content
- Content that contains links visible to search engines but not visitors to the website
- AI-generated content with little or no value
- Pages overloaded with ads
- Affiliate content that is focused on making money rather than providing value
- Provides false claims
Hopefully, none of this comes as a surprise. We all know when we see spammy content, so we should be able to tell when we’re creating it. Then again, sometimes being close to something can make it hard to see the obvious, and it’s always good to double check. So keep this list handy, and every time you create new content for your website, check to make sure it doesn’t meet any of the above criteria.
A Few Interesting Things to Note
The content in this section won’t necessarily help your SEO strategy, I just found it interesting.
Broad Core Updates
Google used to call these updates “broad core updates,” but they recently dropped the “broad.” When asked if there was a reason for the name change, Google said there was no particular reason, just that “core update” seemed to cover it sufficiently.
Possible Impact on Other Google Products?
A few people noticed their Gmail spell checker seemed to be on the fritz. No word on whether that was related to the core update, which is only supposed to affect the search algorithm. I don’t think I noticed anything like that in my Gmail or Google calendar, but I would love to hear your story of Google products going rogue.
Backlinks
Another person pointed out that sites with low domain authority are now ranking high in search results. Since backlinks are used to determine domain authority, the theory is that backlinks are no longer one of the top three features determining search results. This was confirmed by Gary Illes, who said backlinks are still a factor, but that they are not as important as we may have been led to believe. Maybe last week wasn’t the best time to host my webinar on backlinks.
What Does This Mean for Your SEO Strategy?
As always, I recommend creating high-quality content that answers your target audience’s questions. If, at any point, you find yourself creating content just for the sake of creating content, or trying to convince your readers to buy from you without first providing value, you’re on the wrong track.
If you found this content useful and would like to have more like it sent straight to your inbox, you can sign up for our newsletter in the space below. you can also see what we’re up to by following us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.
