What is Google’s core update?
Google announces and makes significant and broad changes called “ core updates” to the search algorithm and system several times a year. These changes aim to make improvements to the search experience for users, delivering much more relevant, trustworthy, and accurate content.
These broad core updates impact a huge number of indexed web pages which is a big deal as Google is refining how it explains the web pages. Hence, it impacts every company’s rankings, traffic, and, subsequently, revenue.
September 2022 Google Core Update by Data Providers
On September 12, 2022, Google began rolling out its 2nd most significant core update which took two full weeks to roll out and then later completed on September 26, 2022. Based on the data found using the Tracking tools, the September Core update hit fast but was less significant than the previous core updates.
The data from the Semrush Sensor tracker tool below shows that the core update hit pretty quickly after the rollout and announcement in terms of volatility tracker. The sensor noticed a pick-up on the 12 of September that carried on through the 13th then started to sink down to the 14th.
Another data provider by Seumrush, Rankranger also shows SERP fluctuations for thousands of domains and keywords that they monitor daily. The graphs show September 2022 core update caused high fluctuation levels which can be noticed a day after the announcement, September 13.
What has changed?
Google said that what has changed is how its systems assess the overall content. Google also added an example of movie top ratings for better context.
“One way to think of how a core update operates is to imagine you made a list of the top 100 movies in 2015. A few years later in 2019, you refresh the list. It’s going to naturally change. Some new and wonderful movies that never existed before will now be candidates for inclusion. You might also reassess some films and realize they deserved a higher place on the list than they had before. The list will change, and films previously higher on the list that move down aren’t bad. There are simply more deserving films that are coming before them,” Google wrote.
What can we do if we got hit?
A list of advice was already put up by Google for us to ask ourselves if we’re offering the best content we can. The given advice was similar to the previous advice given last 2011 around the Panda algorithm to focus on ensuring that you’re providing ithe best content you can.
Many SEOs have advised before that we should read search quality rater guidelines to focus more on EAT which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. The guideline will help us assess how our content is doing from an E-A-T perspective and opportunities to consider as advised by the company.
Conclusion
The recent rollout hit fast but insignificantly got weaker and less impacting than the previous updates but high fluctuations of volatility in ranking can be noticed right after the announcement. If you got hit by the core update there is nothing specific to fix after the core update but the company has given advice and guidelines to follow which will help you re-evaluate your whole content