Google Update improves your ranking: what’s next

Google recently released a spam update. Judging from the way that Google released several spam updates and then core updates last summer, it is not surprising if the core updates are in progress, especially because the holiday shopping season is approaching, and Google releases at that time of the year. renew. After more than two decades of Google updates, one suggestion remains the same, and that is to wait for a while before panic. These are the reasons.

The life cycle of Google updates

The life cycle of Google’s update can be said to introduce new algorithms, modify to improve it, and eventually become obsolete and replace it.

Update improvements usually start shortly after the update is released and the problem is identified. This article links to Google Video to confirm that the algorithm has been updated.

This article focuses on what happens after the update starts and the website loses its ranking.

Wait for the update to settle down

It seems that almost every Google update rolls back a bit, sometimes within a few days as if different parts were added unevenly between data centers.

Sometimes, the search results after the update announcement will be rolled back within a few days, applicable to certain areas of the web, while remaining unchanged in other areas.

There are some algorithm updates that will have a profound impact on search results, such as the Medic update in 2018 and the recent BERT update.

These updates have had a major impact on how Google understands search queries and website content.

John Mueller recently stated that in general, core updates are related to relevance and overall quality. These updates may be the introduction of new algorithms or the same algorithms, but faster or improved.

There are many Google research papers that are both about relevance and new methods for machine learning and improving (relatively) old algorithms (such as BERT).

But every time a new thing is introduced, no matter how many tests are performed, when a website that shouldn’t lose its ranking regains its ranking, there will be unexpected consequences.

Sometimes this happens faster. Sometimes a website must wait until the next Google core update.

Sites that shouldn’t lose rankings are called false positives, sometimes called collateral damage.

Google Dance History

In the early days of Google, the search index was updated monthly. Every month, Google adds the data crawled in the previous months and recalculates the ranking.

At this time, publishers will find out whether changes in title tags, links, and content contribute to their rankings.

It’s actually fun to share seemingly valid notes with other publishers.

Google’s monthly update is called the Google Dance, because the search results during the update cause web pages to gain and lose positions in the search results.

This is WebmasterWorld’s monthly Google update post in 2002, where I comment Regarding a poorly designed website, it suddenly appeared at the top of the search results and then mentioned how the search results will stabilize in a short period of time.

My forum post:

“So far, the number one serp in a term I have followed is occupied by a bad FP 4.0 page that is not in dmoz and has no PR.

I have never seen it before. This is a terrible result (oh my goodness, this is a terrible amateur site) that makes serp look shameful.

However, I will wait until the dance is over, and then I start to foam in my mouth. These things usually seem strange until they are resolved. “

Since the start of the Google update, this stable Google update mode has been a feature.

Google has a long history of calling back any changes.

Hypothetical example of collateral damage in search

Suppose they make changes to better recognize what users mean when making fuzzy search queries, and they use natural language processing to understand the contextual meaning of various external documents (hypothetical thought experiment).

They tested it and it worked. Quality assessors are full of praise, and various algorithms are waiting in line for release.

Then they rolled out in the core update.

Then there will be false positives, because other unworthy sites are pushed up, so some high-quality sites will be pushed down in search results.

It’s not that high-quality websites have been downgraded. Other websites were promoted unintentionally.

It is very important to remember this view of not being downgraded.

Just because a website loses ranking does not mean it is downgraded or targeted.

Fine-tune after update

In the past, Google engineers reported that quality websites lost rankings that shouldn’t have been affected.

For example, in a YouTube video in 2013, Google engineer Matt Cutts rarely introduced behind the scenes how to improve and adjust the update.

Video of Google engineer Matt Cutts

In this case, he commented on the ongoing improvement of the Panda algorithm after reports of collateral damage to high-quality sites affected by the Panda algorithm.

Matt also commented on the side effects caused by the recently released algorithm and how they will take steps to solve these problems in the video.

Matt Katz explained:

“We have also been following Panda to see if we can find some additional signals (we think we got some) to help improve those sites in border areas and gray areas.

Therefore, if we can slightly alleviate the impact of sites that we believe have received some additional quality signals, then this will help sites that may have been affected by Panda to some extent in the past.

We have also heard a lot of feedback about OK from people. If I scroll down three pages, I will see a set of multiple results from one domain.

We have actually made things better because you are less likely to see it on the first page, but more likely to see it on the following pages.

We are working on a change that may be deployed, and it basically says that once you see a set of results from one site, when you drill down to the next page, you will be less likely to see from that site Go to Google search results for more results. “

Going back to the hypothetical example, perhaps Google found that the new natural language processing they added might benefit a certain low-quality website, which would fix the search results when they added additional signals.

Artificial intelligence makes mistakes

Errors occur in artificial intelligence (AI). Facebook had to apologize In September 2021, their AI marked black people as apes.

According to news reports:

“Facebook users who watched a newspaper video featuring black people were asked if they would like it”Continue to watch videos about primates“Recommendation system through artificial intelligence.”

The algorithm is not perfect, and it is not surprising if any core update or spam update goes wrong and Google has to call back. In my opinion, this is almost a given.

Coincidence

Always have reservations about what people say online. Coincidence is sometimes mistaken for evidence.

For example, an SEO told me that they rejected a client who was affected by a core update, and within a few days their website was restored.

But that was a coincidence, and the rejection of the file has nothing to do with site restoration.I know this is because of Google’s John Mueller recently said it would take months to reject documents Before they have any impact on the algorithm, if they have an impact (because Google’s algorithm is good at catching random spam links).

Therefore, don’t automatically believe what people say will happen after the core update, especially when it cannot be cross-referenced as an important trend.

Google’s core update does not target niche markets

Generally speaking, Google Update does not specifically target niche markets. Of course there are exceptions, such as 2021 Product review updates.

But in general, targeting specific market segments is not the core update working method.

Even if a trend is identified, such as when health-related websites seem to be most affected by the update, don’t think that Google is “targeting” a specific niche market. This is not how the update works.

In medical cases, Google updated its understanding of queries and content. Compared with other fields, the profound changes in medical search queries are the most obvious.

Therefore, instead of falsely inferring that Google is “targeting” a niche market, a better way to check for this particular update is to ask, why are medical websites more sensitive to changed content?

Relevance issues

John Mueller recently stated that websites whose rankings are affected by the core update will not find solutions through technical issues such as rejecting random links or fixing 404 errors.

He said so Because the core update revolves around relevance and overall website quality.

I usually solve the core update ranking problem by considering how relevance or quality plays a role.

When people ask questions, what do they mean? This will often change in updates.

The ranking drops. What’s next?

I want to go back to where we started, which is sometimes the update seems to call back. Sometimes they will call back a little bit within a few days, perhaps when they adjust it to fix the error. Sometimes it will dial back in the next update.

Google has already begun to announce when the update is complete. If the ranking has changed and has not recovered, now is a good time to take a closer look at the overall quality and relevance.