This summer has been hot for Google, webmasters, and SEOs as the search engine company releases a series of updates to its algorithm.
The first being a broad core algorithm update split into two releases.
June 2021 Core Update
Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, announced the core update on June 2, 2021, over Twitter when he also shared that there would be a second update in July 2021. This series of core updates mark the first time Google has released two core updates in succession. The update finished on June 12.
July 2021 Core Update
Google announced via Twitter the second of two core updates on July 1, which took about two weeks to release.
Page Experience Update – June
The Page Experience Update considers several factors based on how a page renders in the browser. These factors include loading speed, layout, how quickly you can interact with the page. The initiative is called Core Web Vitals.
Google announced this update on May 28, 2020. Later in November, Google announced a release date for May 2021. It was pushed until June 2021 and will continue rollout through August. This update looks at only mobile pages and eventually for desktop pages separate from this page experience update.
What is a Google Core Update?
Core updates are broad improvements to Google Search that include significant improvements to their ranking process that are released only a few times a year. These improvements include how Google ranks pages and because it’s a broad update, many websites can be affected. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that an affected website has done anything wrong in Google’s eyes.
While Google updates its algorithm thousands of times per year, core updates are broad updates to Google Search. Think of them like significant updates to software or operating systems. These rollouts can take 1-2 weeks.
What do I do if a Google Core Update negatively impacted my website?
Google stresses that a loss of rankings doesn’t necessarily mean the website has done anything wrong, like violating Google’s webmaster guidelines. And they always refer to their article from August 2019 titled What site owners should know about Google’s core updates.
The crux of that article is not to stress and to keep improving the website, especially content. The post provides excellent suggestions on how to look at the quality of your website content. It also recommends looking at the Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
You can always contact us for a thorough analysis of your website and any SEO impacts you may have experienced.
