Google, the search engine giant has recently announced on August 1 that “this week we released a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year” via twitter. Many SEO professionals have confusion about what will change in this updates (regarding their ranking). The Google core algorithm update was announced on 1st August and rolled out completely on 8th August 2018.
Generally, Google does not releases news regarding updates to it’s core algorithm because the Google core algorithm updates happen almost every day, possibly two times in a day.
Clues about Google Broad Core Algorithm Update
After this latest Google algorithm update, some sites rankings has been improve, while others have seen negative or zero change. Google tells few clues about this update. But here is what I discovered:
- This update is to providing better search results to the web searches.
- There is nothing wrong with the websites that have lost rankings
- The improvements are focusing on the content but it is not a “quality” issue
- There is no specific ways to “fix” sites that have lost their rankings
As Google said that we keep update our algorithms several times in a year. There are some minor updates which does not affect the website ranking but sometime the Google releases major algorithm updates which make big impact on website ranking and search results.
If you missed the announcement from Google than here is what Google said via Twitter handle.
“Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year….”
“As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded….”
“There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.”
Many SEO professionals are not happy with the explanation of Google Broad Core Algorithm Update. So, I’m explaining about what is Google broad core update?
What is a Google Broad Core Algorithm Update?
First of all you should know one thing that “Google keep update hundreds of algorithm per year, often more than one per day”. Many algorithm we all knows like Panda, Penguin, Fred, Pigeon, Hummingbird, etc. are implemented to notice specific faults or issues in the Google’s search algorithm.
In Penguin, it is a link spam; In Pigeon, it is local SEO spam. All the algorithms have some specific purpose.
In these types of algorithm updates Google sometime inform and sometime Google not inform to the world about their updates and rolled out directly. People only know after their website get affected in the search results.
A Core Update is Different
As per my understanding, a core update is a change in the main search algorithm itself. Google is slightly changing the importance, weights, orders and values of ranking signals. Understand this by an example:
Imaging that 200 factors are ranking in order of importance. Now, Google updated the core algorithm in 42 factors. Ranking will be changed, but the ranking would be depend on combination of many things not due to 1 specific cause.
Obviously, this is not easy at it seems, but you can think about Google core update in this way.
As Per Ryan Jones at Search Engine Journal
“In this core update, we increased the value of keywords in H1 tags by 2%, increased the value of HTTPS by 18%, decreased the value of keyword in title tag by 9%, changed the D value in our PageRank calculation from .85 to .70, and started using a TF-iDUF retrieval method for logged in users instead of the traditional TF-PDF method.”
Basically, it means Google may have updated the ways search engine calculate term importance on a page, or the weighting of links in Page Rank, or both, or a whole bunch of other factors that they can’t talk about without giving away the algorithm.
At its most complex form, Google ran a new training set through their machine learning ranking model and quality raters picked this new set of results as more relevant than the previous set, and the engineers have no idea what weights changed or how they changed because that’s just how machine learning works.
How Can You Recover from Google Broad Core Algorithm Update?
Want to recover your website from Broad code algorithm update. Here is the tips you should remember for these algorithm change. A core update may be the changes in the values of everything.
Google will not telling you that how to recover from core update. Your ranking is depends on what are you searching. Here are some factors that I noticed, can exclude your website from this Google core update.
Remember one thing that algorithm update don’t penalize your website but it reward another site more with something else.
Content formatting should be higher and internal anchor text should be slightly lower.
Finding “something else” from your competitors is not easy, but because of this SEO professionals in business. 🙂
The best Advice to eliminate your website with Google core update is?
Keep focused on:
- Quality Content
- Clean Architecture
- User Intent and
- Google’s Guidelines
In last, if you have got the #1 position, than don’t stop improving your site because position 2nd will not stop improving.
