Navigating the Top Google Algorithm Updates


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As a marketer, the great mystery behind Google’s consistent algorithm updates can be both frustrating and intriguing at the same time. Google typically announces large algorithm updates in advance which, in turn, prompts discussion and speculation among SEOs and website owners. This can lead to misinformation, confusion, and false guidance.

It’s crucial to pinpoint how these updates impact your organic search visibility to ensure you maximize your website’s reach to its fullest potential.

While we can’t know what algorithm update will come next, we can revisit the abundance of previous updates to identify common patterns and predict how Google Search will continue to evolve.

Our friends at NP Digital recently helped us demystify how Google search algorithm updates work and why Google frequently updates its ranking systems during a live webinar. During the webinar, we explored the most recent impactful updates to take place over the past few years including the numerous product review updates, updates to its Helpful Content system, spam updates, and core updates.

In this post, we’ll share the top takeaways discussed during the webinar around each update. Read on to learn more.

watch the webinar

 



Core updates

The most recent core updates tie together similar themes, placing a heavy emphasis on content quality and relevance, user experience, E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness), as well as backlinks.

None of this likely comes as a surprise to marketers and business owners as Google has consistently expressed it prioritizes content that is helpful, informative, and valuable to users, rather than simple keyword stuffing in an attempt to improve search rankings. As such, marketers must continue to focus on and prioritize creating relevant content that addresses their target audience’s needs and offers a unique perspective.

Regurgitating existing content, thin or low-quality content, and writing content with only search engines in mind will no longer suffice. It also won’t help you win in the ever-growing competition that exists in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Number of Google Updates

Defining a good user experience

Another critical aspect that Google has emphasized in recent core updates is user experience. This means SEO professionals need to ensure that their website is optimized for fast loading times, easy navigation, and mobile-friendliness. Visual stability, removal of intrusive interstitials, and other page experience signals also come into play here.

Google positively rewards websites that provide an optimal user experience, and, in turn, marketers are wise to invest in improving their website’s usability to increase their chances of ranking higher in search results.

Understanding the additional “e” in E-E-A-T

Content quality and user experience aren’t the only key buckets Google is placing an emphasis on, E-E-A-T is also gaining traction. This is more than a catchy acronym and refers to the level of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness that a website and its content possess.

Ultimately, Google wants to ensure that it is providing users with reliable information from credible and trustworthy sources. To do so, marketers can focus on establishing themselves as thought leaders in their respective industries. This can be achieved through creating original and well-researched content, obtaining backlinks from reputable sources, and building a strong online reputation.

Helpful Content update

The first Helpful Content update (now classified as the Helpful Content system) was released on August 25, 2022, and addresses many of the same concerns Google has explicitly called out in its guidance for years: avoid creating unhelpful content and focus on high-quality content instead. Sounds simple enough right? Marketers and SEOs are well aware of the fact that duplicate content, content farms, lack of original content, and spammy sites continue to persist.

This update makes it clear that sites that disobey Google’s content guidance may experience negative shifts in rankings. If the content isn’t helpful or doesn’t match user intent, Google is making it clear it will no longer tolerate or reward this content.

The second Helpful Content Update was released on December 5, 2022, and it continued to refine how Google detects unhelpful content. We may see future Helpful Content updates and further clarification from Google pertaining to Ai content generation as it continues to grow in popularity.

Some of the factors that Google considers when evaluating helpfulness
include: