Google made many changes to its algorithms in September, and Google’s September 2022 product reviews update is now completely rolled out. At the same time, the September 2022 broad core update is also completed.
The back-to-back algorithm updates are a signal to improve your content quality with valuable information.
Google announced rolling out its second broad core update of the year. The update started rolling out on September 12, 2022, and the rollout was complete on September 26, 2022. This update by Google ensures that users see an impact on the search engine rankings after reassessing your site’s content.
After the successful completion of Google’s helpful content update on September 09, 2022, this is the second update from Google in the same month.
Google frequently releases one or more algorithm changes to improve search results with helpful and quality content. Most aren’t noticeable, while sometimes an update might be more noticeable, like the broad core updates.
September has been a busy month for SEOs and site owners with the Google updates, like the helpful content update that is still rolling out and will take two weeks to roll out fully, and now seems to be a possible local search ranking update on Sep 7.
Google announced rolling out its Helpful Content Update in its official blog post. The update started rolling out on Aug 25, 2022, and will take 2 weeks to roll out fully. This update is part of a broader effort by Google to ensure that users see the best content possible in search results.
With this update, Google attempts to demote low-value content from search results. And the update is expected to be as big as Panda, which targeted low-quality content, and Penguin, which targeted webspam.
The Google outage on August 8th, 2022, caused major disruptions for many businesses and website owners who rely on the search engine for traffic.
The outage seems to have been caused by a software update leading to issues with the indexing system. This has resulted in pages dropping out of the search results and poor quality or dated results being served up.
Google announced rolling out a new product reviews update on July 27, 2022. This rollout will take 2-3 weeks to complete and will impact a wide range of websites.
This update builds on Google’s previous product reviews update, which was released in March 2022. The main aim of this update is to provide users with more accurate and relevant information when searching for products online.
Google seems to be rolling out yet another algorithm update, as SERP trackers show severe volatility on June 23, 2022. However, Google has not confirmed any algorithm on their part.
The May 2022 broad core update finished rolling out on June 9, 2022. While the volatility from the former update settled down, the current unconfirmed update stirred up another round of fluctuations in SERP.
Google announced making an algorithmic update for title links. This update targets multilingual and transliterated titles to ensure the title link is in the same language or script as that of the actual page or content.
In case you missed it, Google started rewriting titles last year, which initially didn’t go well with the SEO community, and this current update is seen as a further improvement to the algorithm.
Google announced rolling out a new core update on May 25, 2022, and the update is likely to take two more weeks to roll out completely. This is the first broad core algorithm update of 2022 since the last core update in November 2021. Several webmasters and SEOs are concerned with this update as they are expecting to experience some turbulence in the SEO rankings.
Google has been making substantial improvements to the overall ranking processes several times a year. So, with that, we can conclude that these updates might produce some noticeable changes to how sites perform, which we’ve noted in previous core algorithm updates.
Google might have been possibly rolling out a new search ranking update causing significant spikes in web traffic. The update might have begun affecting many on 6th May, causing a significant drop in traffic for many regions.
Later, there was a surge in web traffic on the 8th of May, which happens to be Mother’s Day. While Google has not officially confirmed this issue, we can expect some time for the search movements to get settled.
Google seems to be rolling out another major search ranking algorithm update as several SERP tracking tools have reported massive fluctuations on April 20th and 21st, 2022. The SERP fluctuations are also recognized by several webmasters and SEO experts.
Although the update seems to be big, Google has not announced rolling out any search updates during this timeframe.
Google has started rolling out yet another product reviews update on March 23, 2022, and it will take a few weeks to fully roll out. The update is meant to enhance Google’s ability to identify high-quality product reviews.
This is the first product reviews update of this calendar year, and Google has shared the criteria they use to evaluate product reviews with this update.
SERP Tracking tools have picked up strong fluctuations on March 4, 2022. The volatility on search results peaked on March 4 but started to settle down in the following days.
While Google has not announced any update, it is interesting to note this unconfirmed update has occurred only a day after the page experience update for desktop has finished rolling out.
Google has begun rolling out the page experience update for desktop on Feb 22, 2022 (Twosday). The update will roll out slowly over the next several weeks and is expected to be completed by the end of March 2022.
Similar to the page experience report for mobile, Google had launched a dedicated report for desktop pages earlier in the Search Console report, so webmasters could understand how well their site has fared in the eyes of Google.
Google has shared information on the demotion signal developed to enhance the DMCA update (also known as Pirate update). Any website demoted by this update, on average, loses 89% of the search traffic.
Google’s DMCA update was originally launched in the year 2012 and was further updated in the year 2014. Since then, this is the first time, Google has advised regarding DMCA update.
Google has announced the rollout of a new product reviews update on December 1, 2021. The update is now rolling out only for English language pages and will take about three weeks to roll out completely.
This is the second product reviews update this calendar year, and expected to make changes to how your product reviews rank in search results. In case if you were hit by the previous update, any improvements made to improve the overall quality of your reviews are likely to be rewarded in search rankings.
Google announced the completion of their November 2021 local search update rollout. The update started rolling out on November 30th and ran till December 8th. Several SEOs have noticed these fluctuations in local search results during this time period.
This update is global and involves the rebalancing of various factors that Google considers when generating local search results.
Google announced rolling out a new core update on November 17, 2021, and the update is likely to take two more weeks to complete. Several webmasters and SEOs are concerned with the timing of this update as the holiday season is just around the corner.
As it goes with any core update, the update is more general and would reassess how your website’s content has performed since the last update. With that said, SERP fluctuations are expected during the rollout of this update.
Google has rolled out an anti-spam update on November 3, 2021, and the update will be fully rolled-out within a week. While the exact details of the update are not disclosed yet, webmasters are encouraged to follow the best search practices.
This update is a part of Google’s continuing measures to eliminate spam from search results. And it’s worth noting that we’ve already seen three spam updates this calendar year (Link spam update, Anti-Spam Update I, and Anti-Spam Update II).
SERP Tracking tools have picked up strong fluctuations in search results, as high as seen around during core updates. The volatility was seen on October 2nd & 3rd (varied across different regions and timezones) but was prominently seen across all the regions on October 3, 2021.
This could be likely a change made by Google that has triggered the SERP tools, but the traffic and rankings might not have been impacted at the same level.
Google has made a tweak on August 17th or 18th that has resulted in a complete rewrite of the titles. While it was common to see Google making minor changes to the title, the complete title rewrites didn’t go well with the SEO community.
Exactly after a month, on September 17, 2021, Google has further refined its title system, based on the feedback from the community.
SERP Tracking tools are off the chart for over a week-long — signs of a possible search ranking update. The SERP volatility started on September 8, 2021, and carried on till September 15, 2021, which goes for over a week.
In the last few months, we’ve come across a number of algorithm updates, but this update seems unusually long, especially for an unconfirmed update. However, the intensity of this update is not as massive as compared to the core updates.
SERP tracking tools have picked up strong signals of SERP fluctuations around September 4, 2021. Some movements in search results were also seen on Sep 3rd and 5th in certain regions, while the spike on Sep 4th was clear and widespread across all regions.
This update is different from the changes that Google announced earlier on September 3, 2021, for the Google News app — as with the current unconfirmed update, the fluctuations are seen widely across many niches, very likely a distinct update.
SERP tracking tools have picked up signals of SERP fluctuations starting on August 18, 2021. But a lot has happened on Google search around this time. The spike in SERP fluctuations could be due to the slow rollout of the link spam update or a bug discovered in the Top Stories carousel, or a tweak that Google has made to rewrite titles completely.
While the exact reason is not easy to conclude as Google has not announced any update on their part, the fluctuations are evident as some webmasters have even seen a spike in traffic and CTR.
SERP tracking tools and several webmasters have reported a spike in SERP volatility on August 14, 2021 — potential signs of a new search ranking update or perhaps could be the link spam update finally coming to an end.
We also saw a similar unconfirmed update on August 6, 2021, and it could be again related to the link spam update.