Google releases regular algorithm updates in order to improve the relevance and quality of search results. Google implements updates throughout the year and its search engine is constantly developing to improve user experience. In order to ensure your content ranks highly in search results, you must keep up to date with the latest algorithm updates.
October 2022 Core Update
Spam update
The most recent update Google has released is a spam update which rolled out on the 19th of October 2022 worldwide and in all languages. Google releases spam updates to improve its spam detection systems and ensure websites don’t show in search results through disingenuous or manipulative behaviour. For example, webpages that repeat keywords constantly or pages that show content to Google that is different to what the user actually sees – this is known as cloaking. This update helps to provide users with the most reliable and relevant results.
How will the spam update affect your website?
Any sites that are considered to be spam will be demoted or removed from Google’s index. Generally, this update will only affect low-quality sites that have the intention of tricking users or phishing sites. However, If you see a drop in your search rankings, we recommend examining the security of your site and looking at Google’s spam policy and making any changes to your content that are necessary.
Product Review Update
Google’s September 2022 product review update is designed to reward high-quality reviews over reviews that contain brief content you can find on a manufacturer’s website. The update will show reviews that are detailed with first-hand observations where people have personally tested the product they are reviewing.
How Will The Product Review Update Affect Your Website?
If you don’t publish product reviews on your site, you do not need to worry about this update. As it is not a core update, it does not impact all search results. The update will apply to websites that publish reviews, such as in the form of blogs.
September 2022 Core Update
Google released a core algorithm update on the 12th of September 2022. Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve search results. Most aren’t noticeable, but help them continually improve.
However, several times a year they make more significant changes to their search algorithms and systems. These are called “core updates.” They’re designed to ensure that overall, they are delivering on their mission to present relevant and authoritative content to searchers
How will the September 2022 Core Update Affect your Website?
Google announces their core updates, because it can produce some widely notable effects. Some sites may notice drops or gains during them. Those with sites that experience drops will be looking for a fix, and we want to ensure they don’t try to fix the wrong things – as there might not be anything to fix at all.
Google has said…
“There’s nothing wrong with pages that may perform less well in a core update. They haven’t violated our webmaster guidelines nor been subjected to a manual or algorithmic action, as can happen to pages that do violate those guidelines. In fact, there’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites. Instead, the changes are about improving how our systems assess content overall. These changes may cause some pages that were previously under-rewarded to do better.
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 realise 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”
Focus on content
As explained above, pages that drop after a core update often don’t have anything wrong to fix. This said, Google understands those who do less well after a core update change may still feel they need to do something. We suggest focusing on ensuring you’re offering the best content you can. This is what Google’s algorithms seek to reward.
Helpful content update – 25th August 2022
Google released a “helpful content update” on the 25th of August, 2022. This update is part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, high-quality content.
Users come to Google for quick, relevant answers to their queries and searchers are getting frustrated with landing on web pages that do not provide the content that they are looking for.
This update will target these websites that have a relatively high amount of unsatisfying or unhelpful content and will better reward those that have content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience.
How will the Helpful Content Update affect your website?
This is likely to only affect those websites that have lots of low quality content not helpful to users. Although sometimes, with Google updates, many sites that didn’t do anything wrong can be caught in the crossfire.
If your website has been affected by the update, the best way to recover is to perform a full content review and improve or delete any low quality content, using data to ensure you don’t remove any pages that are still generating traffic. Even one piece of irrelevant or useless content can affect your rankings, regardless of how many pieces of high value content you publish.
When reviewing, be sure to include relevant keywords without keyword stuffing and create content that informs and educates your audience, leaving them with the information and knowledge that they were looking for. By trimming any low quality content, you will create a better viewing experience for your site visitors and avoid the impact of Google’s latest update.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Google updates are designed to focus on the searcher experience, and improve the quality and relevance of Google’s search results by shuffling the search rankings of indexed web pages. The general aim is to improve the relevance and quality of the search results
