List of Major Google Updates in 2019 and Their Impact on SEO
Imagine yourself studying hard for months to top a super-competitive exam. You got the whole syllabus covered, practiced hard, took all the mock tests and you are dead sure you will make it to the top (studious you!).
You are high on confidence and everything is going so well until the examination board decides to update their syllabus and the mark allocation scheme.
Imagine this update out of the blue skewing the whole ranking system and making your ranking slip.
Sounds mean right?
That’s exactly how an SEO Executive feels whenever Google makes any major SEO updates. The news of the update swiftly raises their anxiety levels and rushes them to check out the updated ranking. If you are a business owner who’s running his SEO on his own, then you are in for field day yourself.
Why Google Update?
It may sound mean from the business owner’s perspective, but in fact, the updates are Google’s effort to give the most relevant search results possible. They make minor updates throughout the year to make their search results helpful for the users.
So it is obvious that these updates do stir up the search engine pot quite a bit. But that doesn’t mean you at mercy of Google every time the pot is stirred. It’s the opposite actually. Google updates do help you reach the relevant users, if you abide by the fundamental laws, and then while doing so quickly make amends to your SEO strategy with respect to the new updates.
In this article here, we make you aware of all the recent Google updates in 2019 and list out the ways to protect your search engine rankings amidst these stirrups. So, here is the list of all major Google updates in 2019 so far, and brief information about their importance:
1. January 2019 Update:
For years now many publishers relied on pre-published content to string-up new content for their pages. The January update clearly states that the publishers must do away with this duplicate content and instructs them to use canonical tags if they had to use the content for their page.
2. Google Core Algorithm Update- March 2019:
March update from Google is the first official update of 2019 and it made quite a wave, particularly among the health websites. The update has favoured the websites that were able to provide high levels of trust for users looking for health-related queries. More weightage has been given for the user signals, website’s brand, and trust.
3. Google Core Update June 2019:
A core Google update is all about making subtle changes under the search engine hood.
And Google’s June 2019 update is the first pre-announced core update in years. Low-quality new sites and cryptocurrency websites have experienced slip in their rankings and revenue. Video carousels in desktop search also experienced a major boost with this Google update.
4. Google Diversity Update – June 2019:
The diversity of Google was focused to improve the diversity of the search engine results for the query by giving more scope to the other websites for the same keyword. The weight age for Google reviews in rankings was slightly boosted with this update.
5. Google Core Update – September 2019:
September update was the third global core algorithm update from Google, pre-announced again. Websites with low-quality scores have been affected and the relevance of Video content for an informational keyword was increased, placing them at the top behind the common question, answer snippets and rank #1 search result. This improved relevance has slightly decreased the traffic of the rank #1 search result.
6. Google October 2019 BERT Update:
Google’s BERT update is focussed on giving more relevant information for natural language queries of the users. This handy update greatly improved the user experience by giving the right answers to the questions posed by the users in their layman terms. It has affected almost 10% of the search results and the silver lining is that we can easily optimize our content to leverage this Google update.
In addition to the above updates, there is another September Update which boosted the original news reporting, and another update that introduced the two new link attributes. Google updates the system almost daily and only the ones that make a good impact on the search results and user experience make it to the news. In spite of so many updates, you can still stay tall on your ground in the search engine land by adhering to the key rules and making quick changes as your coast through.
Being a leading Digital Marketing Company in Hyderabad, we folks at Samskriti Business Solutions have helped hundreds of clients with their SEO rankings and can help you too. If you are business owner who need help with your SEO, our next piece will provide you a simple list of tips that can help you protect your rankings and even improve them, with persistent efforts.