While helping companies deal with major algorithm updates, I tend to field a lot of questions. For example, marketing teams, developers, designers, and even c-level executives tend to pepper me with questions about quality updates, Panda, and other disturbances in the Google force.

When answering questions about topics like these, it’s great to respond with information directly from Google, when possible. It’s one of the reasons I have a Google archive in my office protected by booby traps, poison darts, and a pressure-sensitive safe that triggers a giant rolling boulder like in Indiana Jones. Hey, I like to be prepared.

So, after answering a number of questions over and over, I thought it might be a good idea to write a blog post listing some of the more interesting points. My hope is that this post can help you understand more about major algorithm updates, or that it enables you to pass this information along to your own clients or internal teams.

Important Notes About Algorithm Updates, Directly From Googlers:

1. AdSense is NOT the organic side. Actually, the paid and organic sides don’t talk… at all.
There are times companies call me after getting hit by a major algorithm update and they are in a state of confusion. During that time, I’ve unfortunately heard some say, “Google even looked at our site and said all was ok!”

When that happens, I already know what went down. I typically respond by asking who exactly at Google reviewed their site (knowing that it’s probably not someone from the organic side). And the response 99.5% of the time is, “someone from the AdSense team…”

Well, that would be great if the AdSense team had any impact on, or knowledge of, how the organic side works (which they don’t). And it would be great if the organic side was in tune with the AdSense team, which they aren’t.

Google’s Gary Illyes even said the two teams “don’t talk, pretty much ever.”

I’ve also heard from site owners that their aggressive, disruptive, and deceptive ads should not get them hammered by an algo update because they are AdSense ads. You know, Google would never do that since it’s one of their own products…

That’s completely false!

I’ve helped many sites that run AdSense that got hammered by algorithm updates. Actually, I’ve helped a few of the top 20 AdSense earners that got smoked by quality updates. Beware.

2. Impacted by a quality update? Google looks for significant changes over the long-term.
If you’ve followed my posts about major algorithm updates, then you know we’ve seen a number of quality updates recently. That’s when Google refreshes its quality algorithms, which could cause serious volatility in the SERPs. It’s not uncommon for me to get calls from companies that have seen drops of 40%+, while also seeing other sites surge.

When speaking with companies that have seen negative movement, it’s not long before I get the question, “so what do we need to do in order to recover and how long will it take?” It’s not an easy question to answer, since you need to complete a thorough audit and crawl analysis to surface core quality problems riddling a site. And it’s also never one smoking gun. It’s typically a batter of smoking guns causing problems.

And that’s why it’s great to hear Google’s John Mueller respond to that question during webmaster hangouts. John has explained several times how to deal with negative movement due to quality updates. He said Google wants to see significant changes from a quality standpoint, and over the long-term.

After helping many companies with algorithmic hits over the years, I completely agree. I’ve rarely seen sites bounce back quickly. Instead, sites need to make big changes in quality and maintain those changes over the long-term to see positive movement.

Here is John explaining that (at 39:33 in the video):

3. Featured snippets and rich snippets have a quality component.
I find many still don’t know this, but both featured snippets and rich snippets have a quality component baked in. Therefore, if you are impacted by a quality update, then you can absolutely lose (or gain) rich snippets or featured snippets.

Also, rich snippets are NOT the same as featured snippets. I’ve heard many people mistakenly use the terms interchangeably. Rich snippets include additional information in the SERP listing and you can use structured data to receive them. For example, rich snippets include star ratings, product information, etc. that are attached to the SERP listing.

Featured snippets are algorithmically-selected answers that sit in position 0 (typically above the organic results). They are their own search result and can include paragraphs, images, and tables. By the way, I’m presenting the latest about featured snippets at SMX East next month. Like last year, there’s a lot to cover.

I have seen the loss of rich snippets and featured snippets many times while helping companies after they were impacted by a major algorithm update focused on quality. Once again, Google’s John Mueller has explained the quality component several times in the past.

Here is video of John explaining the quality component to rich snippets (at 6:20 in the video):

And here is a screenshot I posted when writing about major algorithm updates (and the loss or gain of rich snippets). It was clear that the rich snippets algorithm was refreshed during the quality update.

A rich snippets surge during February 7, 2017 quality update:

4. QRG is gold. Read it 10X.
Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG) is printed out and bound in my office. I’m not kidding. The QRG is packed with 160 pages of SEO gold. In the QRG, you will find many examples of what Google deems high quality versus low quality, and across various types of websites. I still find many haven’t read the rater guidelines or internalized the contents, which is CRAZY. You can learn more about the rater guidelines and download the PDF here.

If you’re trying to better understand how Google’s quality algorithms work, then you need to look no further than the QRG. Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll believe Google’s Paul Haahr, a lead ranking engineer at Google (and a veteran Google employee). He’s been at the company since 2002.

While responding to questions about Google patents, Paul explained, “…the rater guidelines are intended to be clear descriptions and examples of what we think users want.”

Yes, read that again. A lead ranking engineer at Google said to read the QRG to see tangible examples of what Google believes users want.

I typically send the QRG to new clients to make sure they understand what it is, how human raters evaluate changes to Google’s algorithms, etc. And you should too.

5. Seeing wild fluctuations for certain queries or pages. Convince Google’s quality algorithms!
If you’ve ever seen wild fluctuations in rankings for certain queries or pages, then there could be a good reason for that. John Mueller recently explained that it could mean that Google’s quality algorithms are simply not convinced your site is the right result based on the query at hand.

John recommended to boost the quality of the page and site in order to cross the quality threshold that would cause those fluctuations to die down. I always think it’s a good idea to review queries leading to your site to make sure your content is meeting or exceeding expectations.

I’ve written about this a lot when covering major algorithm updates. Google is always looking to provide the best result for users. Make sure Google’s algorithms understand your content is the best, and by far.

Here’s the video of John explaining this (at 3:26 in the video):

6. All pages indexed count when evaluating quality.
When helping hunt down low quality or thin content, I will often surface problematic pages that were published a long time ago. For example, older content from years ago. When bringing this up to companies that have been negatively impacted, some explain that they never took care of those urls since they’re old, and can’t hurt them.

That’s not true! Google’s John Mueller has explained several times that all pages indexed will be evaluated when determining “quality” for a site. So those old pages can hurt you. Don’t ignore them… Instead, you should form a plan for properly handling them. That can mean boosting the content quality, noindexing the urls or removing the content (via 404s).

Here is John explaining that at 25:20 in the video:

Jen Slegg also covered this on the The SEM Post based on a webmaster hangout video. Here is a quote from John about low quality content and counting all pages indexed. You can read Jen’s post for more information:
“From our point of view, our quality algorithms do look at the website overall, so they do look at everything that’s indexed.”

7. Bonus From Me: Massive number of inbound links does not mean you’re safe from algorithm updates.
OK, Google didn’t say this. I’m saying it. The reason I can say it is because I’ve helped some extremely powerful sites with massive link profiles that reached out to me after getting crushed by major algorithm updates.

Many in the SEO industry are hyper-focused on links believing that the more links you can get, the safer you’ll be from algorithm updates. Sure, it’s smart to build the right links over time, but believe me, they won’t save you from getting hit by a major algorithm update. Again, I’ve helped some companies with incredibly powerful link profiles that got obliterated by major algorithm updates. Their link profiles didn’t save them, and they won’t save your site either.

Google’s quality algorithms are simply trying to surface the highest quality content for users based on query. And if a larger site with many links has a lot of quality problems, it can get hit just like any other site.

Here are two quick examples based on Majestic data. Both sites have been impacted by several Google algorithm updates over the years, yet the first has 28M+ inbound links showing in Majestic’s Fresh Index, from over 170K different domains. And the second has 10M+ links from over 118K different domains.

Summary – Bookmark these quotes.
So there you have it. Several quotes from Googlers related to algorithm updates. There’s a good chance you’ll come across questions about these topics in the field, and the quotes I listed above might just help your cause. There are times a solid comment from a Googler can temper even the most aggressive critic. And that can go a long way to helping your clients, company, or agency bounce back from major drops in rankings and traffic.

GG

 

Nothing says “end of summer” like fading tans, empty propane tanks, sunscreen aversion, and… a fresh quality update. Yes, here we go again…

As I mentioned in my post about the May 17, 2017 update, Google seems to be pushing quality updates almost monthly now (refreshing its quality algorithms). That’s great if you are looking to recover, but tough if you’re in the gray area of quality and susceptible to being hit.  Over the past several months, we have seen updates on May 17, June 25, July 10, and now August 19. Google has been busy.

Barry Schwartz was the first to report the August 19 update, but it wasn’t long before many started chiming in. I began digging into the dataset I have access to across sites, categories, and countries to better understand the impact.

In addition to reviewing the data I have access to, my inbox lit up with companies reaching out after seeing dips and surges.  And then I had other people on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn message me about the impact they were seeing. So, it was clear that Google pushed another major update on 8/19, with either testing or a different update on 8/14 (more about that soon).

In this post, I’ll provide examples of the impact, explain the connection to previous quality updates, touch on impact I saw on 8/14 for several sites, explain what I’m seeing on sites that were negatively impacted, and then highlight some cases of surges and/or recovery.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s jump in.

Examples of Impact (There Are Many)
First, I wanted to provide some examples of the volatility I’m seeing across sites, categories, and countries. Notice the swings in visibility when the August 19 quality update rolls out.

And there are many more examples of volatility. 

Connection to previous quality updates.
When a major update rolls out, it’s always interesting to see if there was a connection to previous quality updates. For example, sites surging or dropping that have been previously hit by other quality updates. You could definitely see that too, which is one reason to believe this was another quality update. The other reasons relate to what I’m seeing on sites negatively impacted, while knowing what sites worked on that are seeing recovery. Also worth noting is that some sites impacted by Fred saw changes.  Many have been struggling after being hit by that update, so it’s an interesting side note.

Here is an example of a site seeing impact during several quality updates:

The 8/14 Connection: Testing, or another update?
An interesting observation I made while reviewing sites that were impacted was additional movement starting on 8/14. This wasn’t just one or two sites, but a number of sites seeing movement on 8/19. That had me wonder if this was this a test of the 8/19 quality update, or a completely different algorithm update that was rolled out prior to 8/19?

That’s really hard to say, but I haven’t seen any sites that were impacted on 8/14 that didn’t see additional impact on 8/19 (either reversing course or seeing more negative/positive impact). That makes me believe the two are connected (and could have been just a test of the update). Just an interesting side note.

Here is an example of impact starting on 8/14, then reversing:

And Alan Bleiweiss shared an interesting case on Twitter, where a site he has access to saw a drop starting on 8/14, only to bounce back a few days later. Between what I’m seeing, and cases like what Alan shared, something happened on 8/14. That’s for sure.

Negative Impact: What I’m Seeing Across Sites That Dropped
As usual, I dug into sites seeing negative impact to better understand content quality, UX barriers, monetization strategy, advertising setup, technical SEO, and more. As I’ve written about before, there’s never just one smoking gun when you are hit by a quality update. Instead, it’s typically a battery of smoking guns. During my travels, I saw a number of quality problems across categories.

And again, I’m not saying each of these is 100% a factor. Instead, it could be the overall negative user experience from the combination of these factors. Google is trying to make its users happy, so it’s important to highlight any issues that could detract from the user experience (or destroy it).

Category (Tag-like) Pages Ranking Well
I came across several sites that dropped that had many category pages ranking. These are tag-like pages with just a listing of links leading to more content. Checking queries leading to those pages revealed the category pages often could not meet or exceed user expectations (at all). The pages sometimes had massive amounts of supplementary content without much main content. That led to a confusing experience for users.

For example, users were being driven to pages that couldn’t answer their question, and that hammered them with supplementary content (making the experience even more confusing). Not good. Those pages dropped in rankings (and sometimes heavily).

Aggressive, Disruptive, and Deceptive Advertising
Ah, we meet again my friend. I’ve written heavily about how dangerous aggressive, disruptive, and deceptive advertising could be from a quality update standpoint. And I saw many examples of this while analyzing the August 19 algorithm update.

It never ceases to amaze me how some sites absolutely hammer their visitors, attempt to trick them into clicking ads, provide horrible UX barriers, and almost give them a seizure with crazy ads running across their pages.

And let’s not forget full screen ads, advertising elements that push the main content down the screen, annoying popups, and more. I also saw the weaving of ads into main content many times on sites impacted by the 8/19 update. And some of them even tricked me into clicking them while browsing the sites. That’s never a good sign, since I’m neck deep in this and can typically pick up deceptive ads.

An example of a full-screen ad from a site negatively impacted by a quality update. Think about how disruptive this is for users:

One site lost 40-50% of its traffic overnight and it took me about thirty seconds to see the aggressive advertising situation across the entire site.

You need to be keenly aware of this if you run advertising on your site. Do not hammer your users, try to deceive them, drive them off the site when they aren’t expecting that, provide full screen ads as users are trying to read your content, and more. If you do, then don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning to lower rankings and less traffic. Again, I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this happen. Beware.

The Margarine of Content, Just Not Good Enough
I saw a number of examples of pages with decent content, but that dropped during the August 19 update. When checking the competition, you could clearly see higher quality content across most of the urls that now took up the top ten listings. I saw this a number of times during my travels.

This was basically Google’s quality algorithms reevaluating the site and finding that it just wasn’t as high quality as they thought it was previously. Google’s John Mueller has explained this several times before. If that’s the case, then work hard to improve the content on your site. This is one of the cases where there isn’t one thing to change… you just need to improve your content overall.

Here is John explaining that in a Google webmaster hangout:

Flash and Broken UIs:
While analyzing sites negatively impacted by the 8/19 update, I kept coming across sites with broken UI elements, including using flash elements on the page. Those flash elements will not play on mobile and they are also disabled by default in Chrome.

The user experience was absolutely negatively impacted by not seeing the content, and by seeing broken elements. I’ve seen broken UIs before while analyzing previous quality updates, and that could simply relate to unhappy users. For example, users bolting from those sites, and Google picking up the low dwell time in aggregate.

Low relevance based on query. Panda-like.
I’ve mentioned this before when writing about algorithm updates, but there are times sites drop that were ranking prominently for queries they had no right ranking for. And remember, this is exactly how Google now explains Panda. Both Gary Illyes and John Muller have explained Panda this way, especially since it became part of Google’s core ranking algorithm.

For example, Gary has explained that Panda isn’t a penalty. It will adjust rankings for sites that are ranking prominently for queries they can’t answer. I saw that several times during my analysis of the August 19 quality update.

Here’s a video of Gary explaining this:

Now that Panda is running continuously, it’s hard to say if Panda is refreshed at the same time that Google’s other quality algorithms are refreshed, or if something else happened. And we’ll never have that answer (based on how Panda rolls out now). But this is worth nothing so you can review the queries leading to your site, your content, and make sure they meet or exceed user expectations. Always look to identify those problematic areas… and close the gaps.

Thin Content Surrounded By Ads
I mentioned aggressive advertising earlier, but there are times aggressive ads are combined with thin content. That’s a dangerous combination to say the least. I saw that several times when checking sites negatively impacted by the 8/19 update. It’s critically important you don’t suffer from this quality double whammy. Beware.

Examples of Sites Surging and/or Recovering
On the flip side, there were many sites that surged during the 8/19 update. And it was great to see a number of companies that have been working hard to recover see increases. These are companies that had been impacted by previous quality updates. I’ll touch on a few cases below.

Nuclear Option + Strong Content Development Strategy
One company that has seen continual increases during the past several quality updates was once in a very different situation. This is a site that had been impacted by multiple algorithm updates in the past, including Panda, Penguin, and Quality Updates. They contacted me several years ago and have made great strides since then.

That included revamping the entire site, nuking low quality content, improving technical SEO across the board, enhancing their mobile experience, and the latest significant change relates to content. They finally crafted a strong content development plan based on understanding prospective customer pain points.

So they are writing killer blog posts that address those needs, answer those questions, and thoroughly cover topics. That includes video when needed. And that is paying off big-time. They are up 46% since the May 17 update. That’s huge for them and is directly impacting their bottom line. Those new blog posts are driving more people to actually buy from them. That’s a great example of how a killer content strategy can pay off (in multiple ways). Traffic, revenue, trust, etc.

No UX barriers, helpful comments
Another site that saw a healthy increase during the 8/19 update moved to a clean content approach (without weaving ads throughout the content). So instead of breaking up that content many times with annoying and disruptive ads, users could read the entire content without coming across those barriers.

In addition, each of the articles contains valuable and helpful comments. The comments are moderated heavily and add a lot of value to the page. Remember, Google’s John Mueller has explained several times that the comments help comprise the content on the page. Therefore, high quality comments can impact the overall quality of the page (and site when taken in aggregate).

Here is John Mueller explaining that comments and UGC help make up the content on the page:

Industry leader falls, and gets back up
I’ve been helping a site that drives a lot of traffic from Google each day. I’m talking about over a million clicks per day. But they have faltered several times in the past at the hands of quality updates. Even though they are an industry leader, the site is complex, and has many pitfalls.

The crawl analysis and audit I performed yielded several deliverables filled with problems to fix. That was across categories like content, advertising, tech SEO, and more. They are now a few months out from making key changes across the site and have seen a noticeable increase in visibility (especially with the August update). This is a great example of a site tired of the gray area and making a concerted effort to increase quality over the long-term. And it’s paying off.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the rankings increases since the August 19 update:

Collateral Benefit (Algo mistakes)
We often discuss collateral damage when referring to algorithm updates, but there can also be collateral benefit. That’s when a site surges when it really shouldn’t. I saw that a few times during my travels analyzing the August 19 update. That’s my opinion, of course.

One site surged like mad, but it ends up that mobile users are the only ones seeing the true content. Desktop users are redirected to a less-than-optimal experience.

But here’s the rub. They are cloaking. So Googlebot is seeing what the mobile users see and never seeing the redirect to a less-than-optimal page and experience.

Now, I started to think that maybe the site had been switched to the mobile-first index, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I can check when the site believes it’s a mobile visit versus desktop and the indexed page shows “desktop”. The site absolutely surged during the 8/19 update.

Hit by the 8/19 update? Make significant changes, avoid band-aids.
If you’ve been impacted by the 8/19 update, then you need to significantly increase quality overall, and for the long-term. Google’s John Mueller has explained this several times when being asked about quality updates. Check those videos out to learn more.

And if you’ve read any of my previous posts about Google’s quality updates, then you know I’ve provided very similar advice. You need to hunt down all potential quality problems and rectify them as quickly as you can. This can definitely take time to audit, analyze, identify, fix, test, and roll out, but that’s exactly what you need to do.

Perform a thorough crawl analysis and audit of your site, surface UX barriers, thin content, and low quality content. Then handle that correctly by either improving the content, nuking it (404), or noindexing it. And absolutely review your advertising setup. Do not provide aggressive, disruptive, or deceptive advertising. Again, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen this across sites that have been negatively impacted by Google’s quality updates. It’s sometimes hard to take a step back and look at site quality overall, but that’s exactly what you need to do. Again, there’s typically not one smoking gun… there’s usually a battery of smoking guns affecting a site.

Summary – Fall Is Coming, Expect More Quality Updates
I explained earlier that Google seems to be pushing quality updates at a higher frequency than ever before (refreshing its quality algorithms nearly monthly now). So if you’ve been impacted by the August 19 update, then start working on your site now. Surface all quality problems and handle correctly. Google will need to see significant changes in quality, and over the long-term in order for you to see recovery.

Good luck.

GG