Google’s December 2020 Core update was a big one according to many of the data providers. Our job, day in and day out, is to analyze Google updates and determine what the commonalities are so that we can advise our clients on how to improve their websites. Now that the core update is done rolling out, as of December 16, 2020 and while we do not have the December core update figured out completely, we thought we would pass on some interesting observations that we have made so far.
What is a core update?
Google makes changes to their search algorithms on a daily basis. A few times a year, they release significant changes to their core search algorithms and systems that are much more noticeable. In Google’s own words, core updates are, “designed to ensure that overall, [Google is] delivering on [their] mission to present relevant and authoritative content to searchers.”
If your website’s traffic has declined following a Google core update, most likely Google’s algorithms have determined that there are other pages on the web that are more relevant and helpful than yours. It can be frustrating to SEO’s to not know how Google does this.
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1. Organize the content on the web: As Google crawls the web, they organize pages in an index. They take note of key signals on each page such as which keywords are on the page, how up to date the page is, and more.
2. Determine the meaning of the searcher’s query: In order to understand which pages to recommend to a searcher, Google needs to understand the meaning of each query. Algorithms determine whether a query is looking for fresh, new content or not. Some words in a query may be easy for Google to decipher. Google’s algorithms can now do a good job at understanding whether a searcher is looking for a single, distinct answer in which Google could present them a fact from the Knowledge graph, or perhaps they are doing research where they would like to read more thorough information and peruse Google’s organic results.
3. Determining which pages are the most helpful to return: Once Google understands the intent behind a query, their goal is to return web pages that are the most helpful to answer this query.
But how does Google determine which pages are the best to return to a searcher? Google has a blog post dedicated to explaining core updates, while offering advice to site owners.. Much of our methodology in diagnosing the cause for a traffic drop is based on the items described in this post.
The Quality raters guidelines can give us clues about Google updates
In the past, many Google updates would have a very clear and obviously discernible focus. Sites affected by the early updates of Google’s Penguin algorithm generally had problems with low quality spammy link building. Sites affected by Google’s Panda algorithm, another algorithm released many years ago, were usually ones that would be easy to identify as having large amounts of thin, unhelpful content.
Core updates usually do not have one single and obvious focus. If your site was negatively affected there is rarely a single smoking gun to blame.
The good news is that we can get some clues as to what improvements Google wants to make to search by studying changes made to Google’s Quality Raters’ Guidelines (QRG). When these guidelines update, we pay attention!
If a Google engineer is writing code to improve the algorithm, they will present the Quality Raters with two sets of search results to review. One is the results as they currently exist when a keyword is searched. The second is what the results would look like once the engineer’s proposed changes to the algorithm are implemented. The raters then evaluate the search results based on their knowledge of the QRG and their feedback is given to the engineer.
Sometimes the QRG can give us clues as to what Google engineers are working on changing in Google’s algorithms. For example, in the summer of 2018, just prior to the August 1, core update, Google modified the QRG to add the words “safety of users” when describing YMYL pages: