Google recently announced a core update affecting search engine results and SEO activities. Google routinely make minor changes to how websites are crawled, indexed and displayed in results, with major updates taking place every few months.
This update was aptly labeled the “December 2020 Core Update“, and Google shared full details of the changes in a blog post on their Google Search Central Blog. As noted in the post, Google are committed to confirming when larger updates take place and actions might be required. The blog goes on to detail that when larger changes are released, some websites may notice drops and other might see gains. For this reason, we’re continually monitoring the volatility of search results across industries and closely following information published by Google.
Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the December 2020 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog post for more about that:https://t.co/e5ZQUAlt0G
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 3, 2020
The details shared by Google generally follow the advice and guidance published around previous core updates. It’s important to recognise the trends across these updates to understand the direction of future revisions to their algorithm – key elements here are content, updates to quality guidelines and EAT. You can learn more about EAT in our post regarding Google’s September 2019 update here.
Additions to Google’s quality guidelines indicate an increased focus on safety. As you can imagine, with search terms related to medical or financial topics (YMYL) it’s important that Google recommends sites that are reputable and contain accurate information. These changes are on trend with previous core updates over the last 24 months.
A rather cryptic tweet from Google’s John Mueller has given rise to other theories regarding website performance, page structure and UX. In the past, we’ve seen Google make changes to their algorithm leading up to a major rollout. Including changes related to this now would make sense in the build up to Google’s major update coming in May 2021.
What is essential
is invisible
to the eye.
— ? John ? (@JohnMu) December 8, 2020
We’ll be continuing to monitor the results of this core update over the next few weeks and make changes where needed. If you’d like further information on the December 2020 Core Update or SEO in general, please get in touch.