Recent Google Updates To Watch Out For

Google, being the most prominent search engine in the world, is constantly dedicated to providing its users with relevant and high-quality search results. With billions of searches made every day, Google's sophisticated algorithms and machine learning systems continually refine search results to ensure that users can quickly find the information they need with ease. As such, it consistently strives to improve its algorithms to enhance its understanding of the content and rank websites accordingly. 

In its efforts to achieve this goal, Google releases algorithm updates on a regular basis, which encourages website owners and digital marketers to create and optimise their content to meet the evolving standards of relevance, quality, and user experience. Marketers need to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and plan their strategies accordingly to ensure that their websites stay relevant and rank high on Google SERP. 

The frequent updates to Google's algorithms can pose a challenge for marketers. It's easy to miss critical updates, and falling behind can have serious consequences for a website's search engine rankings. It can adversely affect the website's search engine rankings, resulting in a decrease in traffic and revenue. Therefore, it is crucial for marketers to stay informed about these updates and make any necessary adjustments to their SEO strategies. By doing so, they can ensure that their websites remain competitive and relevant in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

5 Recent Google Updates To Watch Out For

This blog will uncover the most recent updates by Google that every marketer should watch out for:

Product Review Update

Google has recently updated its product reviews system to prioritise high-quality and informative reviews while filtering out low-quality and irrelevant ones. The updated system aims to reward content that provides insightful analysis, original research, and expert opinions. This update, which was released on April 12, 2023, is a successor to the earlier version released on February 21, 2023. 

The February 2023 update primarily focused on eleven languages worldwide, while the April 2023 update leans heavily on signals of experience, including visual evidence, audio, links to evidence of experience, and quantitative measurements. To improve their review rankings, marketers must take extra steps to provide actual evidence of experiences, such as original photos and quantitative measurements. The new update gives a lot of weightage to such evidence. Therefore, it is crucial for marketers to understand that their reviews' quality will play a significant role in determining their rankings.

March Core Update

Google's highly anticipated March core algorithm updates, which were released on March 15, 2023, brought about significant changes to the search algorithms and systems. These updates have had a significant impact on search rankings, making it crucial for SEO experts and website owners to adapt to new strategies and stay informed. The updates focused on monitoring site metrics, emphasising quality content, and optimising technical aspects to maintain a strong presence on search engines. As 81% of marketers consider content as their core business strategy, this core update serves as a reminder for SEO experts and website owners to stay up-to-date with changes and adjust their strategies accordingly. The March core algorithm updates are noteworthy. It requires SEO experts and website owners to be proactive in adapting their strategies to remain competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Helpful Content Update

As per stats, around 44% of searchers consume 3-5 pieces of high-quality content before engaging with a vendor. With the rise of websites serving search engine-specific content rather than high-quality content, Google’s helpful content update improves search results by prioritising web pages with high-quality and relevant information. Google’s helpful content update, a sitewide signal, started on 5th December 2022 and ended on 12th January 2023. This update was released globally, impacting all languages, including English. It is a step taken by Google to reduce low-quality content & make it easier for searchers to find authentic & valuable content in search. The update will downgrade the unhelpful websites that rank in search while promoting more helpful websites which are designed for humans & are above the search engines. 

Link Spam Updates

As per stats, around 66.5% of site links in the last 9 years are dead. Google released the Link Spam Update to neutralise unnatural links & remove any signals which are passed to the linking domain. It was started on 14th December 2022. The update went on for 29 days, & ended on 12th January 2023. The update affects results in all search languages. Google brings up a significant upgrade in its spam detection system. With the new update, it can find any purchased links & detect domains which are primarily used to pass links to other sites. Additionally, Google utilised its AI-based spam prevention system – SpamBrain, for the first time, which detects spam directly & identifies sites that are buying links for building outgoing links. 

Major Google Announcement

Google recently announced its documented ranking systems page, creating a buzz in the industry. Google’s recent announcement is related to removing 4 ranking systems – page experience system, mobile-friendly ranking system, page speed system, & secure sites system – from the list & counting them as ranking signals. With the current proclamation, Google cleared all the confusion evoked by its previous announcement around the ranking system. Marketers now need to put more effort into content & on-page factors rather than the above mentioned factors. While these elements will contribute to the website evaluation, the content will remain the prime factor.

Final Thoughts

Keeping up-to-date with Google's updates is critical for SEO experts and website owners to remain competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. Google continuously strives to enhance the quality of its search results and user experience, releasing frequent updates to its algorithms and systems. By staying informed and implementing effective strategies, website owners can maintain or improve their search engine rankings and provide their users with the best possible experience. It is essential to keep an eye out for future updates as Google continues to prioritise quality and relevance in its search results.