According to Google, it releases one or more changes that aim to improve search results within one year. The year 2019 is no different, with two core updates that change not only the layout of Google search but also influences how users are clicking which results. The changes vary in scale and, of course, effects. And true to all significant algorithm changes specifically, there are winners and losers, with the digital marketing agencies in the Philippines staying calm amidst the chaos.
Also, the search engine giant had named its core updates to avoid confusion and preempt the SEOs to concoct their own naming using the conventions they made before. The names of the core updates are simplistic now.
Below are some of the major changes that Google has rolled out so far.
March 2019 Core Update
Although the SEOs initially called it the Florida 2 Update, Google was quick to disseminate information on what it should be called. The change adheres to the E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) guidelines as stipulated in Quality Raters Guidelines (QRG).
Health, news, e-commerce, and cryptocurrency sites saw the biggest declines after the update. Not all sites within the same niche are affected, though. This explains the contradictions on the scientific consensus among digital marketing experts.
With this said, some algorithm experts think of it as complementary with the Panda update that targeted low-quality websites. These spammy pages basically lack E-A-T. Spokesperson to Google, Danny Sullivan, said that it is not Panda, but valuable improvements on a variety of ranking signals. This, in turn, explains why some sites within the same industry dropped and others, gained.
Mobile Search Layout Update
Although this is not a major or official change, Google changed how the mobile search results pages look. The new design aims to put branding front and center and based on information available on the web. In this way, the users would have a better grasp of where the information is coming from.
In the new design, the users will immediately notice the site name and icon on top of the page. The URL follows then, the page title. For the ads, the word Ad is in place instead of the icon, blending in with the organic results. With this, it would be easier for any user to scan the entire results page.
Other than the new mobile content format, Google also announced that it is planning to add more actionable features including previews on results cards. This makes possible accessing sections of the website while technically scrolling the results page.
Google Image Layout Update
Google announced in January 2019 that there would be several changes in Google Image. Searching for images would become more search-related other than becoming more educational and transactional.
Between March and April, new changes are rolled out. It started with image thumbnails as a mobile search feature. Image boxes are minimized as well on both desktop and mobile.
Shoppable images are the newest feature wherein an image shown is an ad format. The image has interactive points the users can click–the product name and price will appear as the user hovers over certain parts of the image. These ads are labeled as “sponsored.”
Another significant change is the randomly appearing keyword box within the image results page. The related searches box contains keywords that are also clickable.
June 2019 Core Update
Another broad core algorithm update happened on June 3, 2019. The core update has two goals: sift out spam to show more relevant content. Presenting content quality on the results pages mean excluding spam. Some digital marketing experts claimed that the update was a Penguin tweak this time. Penguin is the core algorithm that deals with links.
Penguin essentially created answer-based results in SERP. The core update, further along, focused on site relevance, which means pages that are more relevant to the search queries will be shown more in the results pages than with less relevant results.
According to Google, there is nothing to fix. On the online marketers’ side, however, there are several aspects to consider. Aside from improving how Google understands search queries, the search engine also targeting improvements in natural language processing.
Additionally, Google is into improving the contextual linkage between a web page and it as a part of the website. While at it, it develops ways to determine low-quality links and how to ignore them on the results pages. It means the process of ranking based on backlinks is improving.
Diversity Update
Diversity Update pertains to ‘cleaning’ the search results. If you’ve done searching for a specific keyword before and it returned many listings from a single website, you won’t be seeing the same after this update. The top results are now more varied, which means you will see a more – you guessed it right – diverse search engine results pages (SERPs).
Google issued a disclaimer, though. It will still show more than two listings from the same site only if it is relevant to do so for specific searches. Thus, those websites that are enjoying multiple listings on the results pages for a particular search query experience a significant decline in rankings.
More core algorithm updates are to be expected this year, and with totally unrelated side tweaks as what we have seen with the last two broad changes so far. No specific niches are being targeted, but each update always creates winners and losers in terms of ranking.
While Google is saying that fixing is not necessary, it would be wise to do a website audit after every broad core update to make sure that the site is still performing optimally. Better yet, a regular audit must be performed for both technical and non-technical aspects. The goal is to ensure that the website has a sound backlink profile as well.
Algorithm update-proofing your website also means publishing high-quality content. It means content that provides value to the users, giving solutions to their problems. Google favors relevance; thus, the need to align with the needs and preferences of the target audience as contextually as possible.