What you should know about Google’s Core Updates
Everyday, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve their search results. Most aren’t noticeable but as a whole they help Google incrementally continue to improve.
Key is to focus on content
As explained, pages that drop after a core update don’t have anything wrong to fix. This being said, we understand 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. That’s what our algorithms seek to reward.
Recovering and more advice
A common question we hear after a core update is how long does it take for a site to recover, if it improves content?
Broad core updates tend to happen every few months. Content that was impacted by one might not recover – assuming improvements have been made – until the next broad core update is released.
However, Google is constantly making updates to their search algorithms, including smaller core updates. They don’t announce all of these because they’re generally not widely noticeable. Still, when released, they can cause content to recover if improvements warrant.
Do keep in mind that improvements made by site owners aren’t a guarantee of recovery, nor do pages have any static or guaranteed position in Google search results. If there’s more deserving content, Google will continue to rank well with their systems.
It’s also important to understand that search engines like Google do not understand content the way human beings do. Instead, they look for signals they can gather about content and understand how those correlate with how human beings assess relevance. How pages link to each other is one well-known signal that Google uses. But they also use many more, which they don’t disclose to help protect the integrity of Google search results.
Of course, no improvement made to Google Search is perfect. This is why Google is constantly improving & updating. Google takes in more feedback, does more testing and keeps working to improving their ranking systems. This work means that content might recover in the future, even if a content owner makes no changes. In such situations, Googles continued improvements might assess such content more favorably.