On 2nd June 2019, Google officially announced its Broad Core Algorithm Update. They have decided to call it the June 2019 Core Update. This is the first time that Google has officially broadcasted the updates in its core algorithm. Earlier in March, Google updated its algorithm and called it March 2019 Core Update, to avoid confusion about what type of update it is and when it happened.
Core Update Analysis
Nothing was officially announced by Google about the March 2019 Core Update. Based on the drop in rankings of web pages, it was believed that the major focus of Google was on two basic measurements regarding what Google looks for in a high-quality page and how websites can perform better in Google’s algorithm. Below are the two measurement guidelines given by SEMrush:-
- E-A-T (Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness)
- YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)
Even in the June 2019 Core Update, Google hasn’t officially announced any update. Based on the fluctuation of rankings of earlier “high-authority” websites, there were some clues as to what updates might have resulted in the drop in the rankings of these websites. Most of these clues are the result of Google’s ranking of high-quality content. Some of the clues listed by Search Engine Journal are as follows:-
- Google might have increased the value of keywords in H1 tags by 2%, and the value of HTTPS by 18%, while decreasing the value of keywords in the title tags by 9%.
- Good might also have changed the D value in their PageRank calculation from .85 to .70.
This means that Google may have changed the way they calculate term importance on a page, or the weighting of links in PageRank, or both, and focused on providing better search results. In October 2018, Google SearchLiason multi-tweeted about the algorithm update calling it “An Update about Updates”, and counseled that there is nothing to fix in that.
Here is the most important segment of the multi-tweet guidance:
Google’s advice to websites for the June 2019 Core Update remains the same, as is recorded in Google SearchLiason tweet:-
When Google says, “there is nothing to fix”, it is because the core algorithm updates might not be targeting low-quality content or low-quality websites, but rather, about improving relevance. Google’s June 2019 Core Algorithm is more than just E-A-T.
Danny Sullivan tweeted:
“We tell lots of things to do. Improve site speed. Consider secure. Etc. But that’s not what this update was about. It’s broad. And respectfully, I think telling people there’s no particular thing to “fix” is indeed helpful. It means, hopefully, they think more broadly…”
This tweet was followed by this one:
“Want to do better with a broad change? Have great content. Yeah, the same boring answer. But if you want a better idea of what we consider great content, read our raters guidelines. That’s almost 200 pages of things to consider:”
The tweet explicitly asserts that the term “broad” refers to a wide scope of updates and covers a large number of topics. “Nothing to fix” means that there is much more than just targeting low-quality signals. It can mean many things related to Google search results and some of them are as follows:
- Improving its natural language processing tasks
- Improving its understanding of search queries
- Improving its understanding of how a part of a web page that exists within a larger part of a web page
- Improving the speed at which it identifies low-quality links and ignores them
Everyone is busy guessing the updates in Google’s June 2019 Core Update. What we believe is that the updates are based on user intent and quality content.
Let us know your views regarding the algorithm update in the comments section below.