This morning the community SEO started to notice a big drop in their website rankings and traffic.
Many pieces of content that were already in a privileged position have fallen to much less favorable positions. Google later confirmed that this is yet another algorithm change that has driven search engine users crazy. Although algorithm updates are nothing new, this one is causing significant drops in organic traffic for websites that were already very well positioned.
This was an update to what Google calls wide core algorithm, and joins many others, because every day one or more updates are released to improve results.
Some are more specific and others are broader. Just to give you an idea, it is estimated that there are 500 to 600 algorithm changes per year.
In today's algorithm update, the idea is that the system benefits some pages that were previously under-rewarded, and although we'll never know the details of how this works, the consequences of the update were felt immediately.
For those who are already thinking about what to do now to resume improving their results, don't think that the recipe has changed: produce excellent content and further improve the website over time, based on the new rules. There is no other secret.
But since Google's tools update on December 1, 2000, there have been many algorithm changes, which at each time certainly meant that webmasters had to change their mindset to continue achieving good rankings.
This year alone, there have been other significant changes
The most recent update was on July 24, in Chrome Security Advisories (full site).
After warning users of insecure (i.e. non-HTTPS) forms, Chrome 68 started defining all non-HTTPS sites as insecure and the result of this is the drop in traffic to non-HTTPS sites, after all who wants to browse a non-secure site.
While the change happened on July 24, it depends on users installing the latest version of Chrome, and this could take weeks to months to fully complete.
On July 9th, another big change: the Mobile Speed Update, which made page speed a ranking factor for mobile results.
On June 14, Google moved videos from organic results with thumbnails to a dedicated video carousel, causing a major shift in results that were previously tracked as organic.
One of the most significant changes of the year was launched on March 26th of this year: the mobile first. The guidance is that websites update their mobile versions to have priority in ranking.
What do we mean by that?
Many changes will still occur and require that Webmasters Stay up to date on the new rules to continue maintaining your results. This will not change.
So, no sentimentalism, it's just algorithms. It's time to roll up your sleeves again and learn the new rules to swim well in the new flow.
1 comment