It’s that time again: another Google Update is upon us! (or, by the time this article goes live, it will have been fully rolled out)
Our Mildura web design team, like most anyone else who works on websites or runs a business with an online presence, always dreads these updates (which happen a few times a year). Google core updates are not unlike a crazy storm that looms in the distance, threatening to destroy your property, but often leaving it unscathed.
Truth is, you never quite know what the aftermath of a Google update will be. Sometimes you’re safe from any major changes in the search rankings, and other times you might find your website dropping off and consequently losing traffic (and therefore customers and sales).
Here’s what we know about the May 2022 Google Core Update:
- It was rolled out from 25 May – 9 June 2022 – this means as of now, the update is complete.
- As per Google, “Core updates are designed to increase the overall relevancy of our search results and make them more helpful and useful for everyone”. As per the average Google user, this is questionable and debatable. Always keep in mind that these updates are imperfect, and the algorithm cannot possibly know with certainty which webpages are the most valuable and useful to users. It can only guess based on data.
- Google assures us that, if we’ve seen a drop in the rankings after a core update, it does NOT mean our website has been targeted or that we’ve done anything wrong; it simply reflects a change in how Google assesses websites and determines their search ranking. We could very well jump back up the rankings after the next update (sometime later this year).
- There’s nothing you need to do, and nothing you CAN do to instantly bounce back in the search rankings, if you’ve experienced a drop after this update. All you can do is what you should always be doing: publishing high quality and relevant content consistently (and ideally, engaging our digital marketing Mildura team to optimise your website!)
- This update was global, applied to all types of content, and affected Google Discover and Featured Snippets as well as regular Google search results.