In part one of my series on the December 2020 broad core update, I covered a number of important items. If you haven’t read that post yet, I recommend doing that and then coming back to this post. For example, I covered the rollout, timing, tremors and reversals, the impact I was seeing across verticals, and then I covered a number of important points for site owners to understand about broad core updates.

Those items spanned quality indexing, the importance of providing a strong user experience, avoiding hammering users with ads, technical SEO problems that cause quality problems, the A in E-A-T, machine learning in Search, and more. My first post will provide a strong foundation before jumping into the case studies I’ll cover below.

Three Case Studies, Three Interesting Lessons About Broad Core Updates
In this post, I’ll cover three case studies that underscore the complexity and nuance of broad core updates. Each is a unique situation and site owners (and SEOs) can learn a lot from what transpired with the sites I’ll be covering. I was planning on covering four cases, but this post was getting too long. I might cover that other case in another post in the future, though.

Remember, Google is evaluating many factors over time with broad core updates. It’s never about one or two things. Instead, there could be many things working together that cause significant impact. Google’s Gary Illyes once explained that Google’s core ranking algorithm is comprised of “millions of baby algorithms working together to output a score”. That’s why I recommend using a “kitchen sink” approach to remediation where you surface all potential problems impacting a site and fix them all (or as many as you can). The core point, pun intended, is to significantly improve the site overall.

It’s also important to understand that Google wants to see significant improvement over the long-term. Google’s John Mueller has explained this many times over the years, and it’s what I have seen while helping many companies deal with broad core updates. And the case studies below support that point as well.

In the case studies below, I’ll cover each site’s background leading up to the December broad core update, some of the important issues I surfaced while helping those companies, how those issues were addressed (or not), and what the outcome was when the December update rolled out. Again, my hope is that these cases will help site owners understand more about broad core updates, how to deal with negative impact, and understand various factors that could be leading to negative impact. Let’s jump in.

Below, I have provided a table of contents in case you want to jump to a specific part of this post:

• Case Study 1: Niche News Publisher – A Double Core Update Hit, But E-A-T Galore
• Case Study 2: Crushed By The December Update. It’s Like Google Doesn’t Even Know You Anymore
• Case Study 3: Overcoming “The Creep”
• Tips and recommendations for site owners.

Case Study 1: Niche News Publisher – A Double Core Update Hit, But E-A-T Galore
The first case I’m going to cover is a super interesting one (and I felt especially connected to it since I loved the site even before the site owner reached out to me!) It’s a news publisher that focuses on a very specific niche that reached out to me after getting hit hard by the January 2020 core update. Again, I knew the site right away (since I had been reading it for years) and I was initially extremely surprised to hear the site had been hit hard.

Note, they contacted me in March of 2020, so months after the January update rolled out. Waiting to improve a site is a big risk site owners take and I’ll touch on that later in this case.

The site had lost 45% of its Google organic traffic overnight with the January 2020 broad core update:

I wish that was the only drop the site had to deal with in 2020, but it wasn’t. More about that soon.

Google News, Top Stories, and Discover:
Based on how Google was viewing the site, it rarely showed up in Top Stories, almost never ranked highly in Google News, and had no Discover traffic at all. And I mean none… the Discover reporting didn’t even show up in GSC. That means it had no impressions or clicks over time. And remember, it’s arguably the top publisher in its niche.

E-A-T Galore:
The site, including its core writers, had E-A-T galore. That was definitely not the problem, not even close. It’s a well-known, well-respected, leader in its niche. I would argue it’s the top news site in its niche and has broken some of the biggest stories in its category.

With regard to the A in E-A-T, which is authority, Google has explained that one of the best-known signals it uses is PageRank, or links from across the web. Google explained this in a whitepaper it released about fighting disinformation.

Also, Gary Illyes once explained that E-A-T was largely based on links and mentions from well-known sites. Note, I covered the A in E-A-T in my first post in this series (if you are interested in learning more about that topic). For this site, this was covered big-time. The site is absolutely an authority in its niche. The site has over 2M inbound links from over 26K referring sites. And a number of the sites linking to this news publisher are some of the most powerful and authoritative websites in the world.

So what was the problem? Why did the site take such a big hit? If you read part one of this series on the December 2020 broad core update, then you know that core updates are never about one thing. Google is evaluating many factors across a site and for an extended period of time. I always say there’s never one smoking gun, there’s typically a battery of them.

Therefore, I dug in the way I normally would in order to surface all potential issues that could be causing problems. That included auditing content quality, user experience, the advertising situation, technical SEO, and more. I clearly explained this process to my client and they were on board. They said they would clear a path, implement as many changes as possible, and as quickly as possible, in order to see recovery in the future.

Well, Hello May 2020 Broad Core Update, How Nice To Meet You…
It’s also worth noting that as I was auditing the site, and my client was implementing changes, the May 2020 core update rolled out AND THEY GOT HIT AGAIN. This can absolutely happen if a site hasn’t improved significantly (or if a site chooses to not improve at all). In addition, even if you are implementing changes, it’s important to understand that recent changes would not be reflected in the next broad core update. I covered that several times in my previous posts, including both the May 2020 core update and part one about the December 2020 broad core update.

With the May 2020 core update, this news publisher dropped by an additional 51%. That’s on top of dropping 45% with the January core update. So they were down over 90% from where they once were:

Needless to say, my client felt defeated. They couldn’t believe they dropped even more. They were now receiving a trickle of traffic compared to what they used to. I explained that they should continue to make changes, that not enough had been implemented, and not over the long-term.

I basically felt like Mickey in Rocky pushing his fighter to keep driving forward:

Needless to say, my client was eager to keep driving forward, implement big changes, improve the site significantly, etc. But, it’s important to know that you can get hit by multiple core updates in a row if Google isn’t digging your site. I have covered that before in blog posts and in my presentations on broad core updates.

Below, I’ll cover several of the core items I surfaced during the audit that could have been contributing to the drops the site experienced during two broad core updates. I can’t cover everything that was addressed during the engagement, but I will provide a number of important findings. And keep in mind, there are millions of baby algorithms working together to output a score. It’s not about one of the following items, but more about improving all of them (including other items not covered below).

Lower-hanging fruit: Thin content, cruft:
With many news publishers, there’s a tendency for low-quality content to build up over time. They are typically larger, more complex sites and cruft can definitely build. And after years go by, some sites might have a lot of lower-quality content in pockets across the site.

Although this site produces some of the best content in its niche, I did surface a lot of cruft that had built up over time. I explained what “quality indexing” was to my client, which is making sure only high-quality content is indexed, while ensuring low-quality or thin content is not indexed. They understood the concept quickly and had no problem nuking thin and low-quality content from the site. Remember, Google is on record explaining that every page indexed is taken into account when evaluating quality.

Here is Google’s John Mueller explaining this:

Content quality (and strategy):
As I was analyzing content that dropped heavily during each update, I noticed something interesting. There were a number of round-up-like posts that were thin and somewhat misleading. So instead of creating one strong page that could be updated for the content at hand (which I can’t reveal), the site was publishing many thinner pages over time. This led to many pages on the site that were ranking and receiving traffic, but had no way to meet or exceed user expectations. This was a huge find in my opinion.

My client tackled this head-on and used the approach I recommended for creating one piece of content that can live over time and always contain the latest information, while archiving older pages when needed. This led to higher quality content that can meet or exceed user expectations, while also improving the “quality indexation” levels on the site overall. It was a win-win.

User Frustration and “Hell hath no fury like a user scorned”:
While continuing to analyze content that dropped on the site, I noticed some content that could easily confuse users (and it looked like it was confusing Google too). I can’t go too in-depth here, but let’s just say that users searching Google to accomplish a task were ending up on the site and on these pages. But the pages did not provide that functionality at all.

So users were visiting that page, then digging further into the site believing they could ultimately find what they were looking for. But they couldn’t find that information no matter where they turned, which led them back to the original landing page. And then using behavior flow in Google Analytics, I could see they were then trying other pages on the site in a never-ending journey. This is similar to the case study I wrote about the engagement trap and user frustration.

After explaining this to my client, and showing them behavior flow screenshots of what was happening, they nuked those pages. I also believe this was an important finding. Remember, “hell hath no fury like a user scorned”.

UX, Unavailable Videos, and Broken pages:
There are also times where news publishers push an article live and don’t revisit those pages (since they are working on the next big story). Unfortunately, those older pages can break for one reason or another. For example, I surfaced pages with either missing images or videos that weren’t available anymore. And when the videos were core to the article, that made the pages useless. There is no way a page can meet or exceed user expectations when the core element doesn’t even load.

So in an effort to enhance the user experience across the site, my client tackled these issues page by page. And if a page couldn’t meet or exceed user expectations anymore based on query, then the page was nuked.

Here was a third-party video used to support an article, but it was no longer available (and was actually removed due to a copyright claim against whoever uploaded the video to YouTube):

Sponsored links: Handle with care:
I’ll keep this one quick. The site has sponsors that are prominently displayed on the site with sponsored links. But, it wasn’t clear they were sponsors, so that required a clear disclaimer. Second, the links were followed. My client nofollowed all of those links and used rel sponsored as well. This was an easy fix, but the right one on several levels.

Google canonicalizing pages to third-party sites:
There was also a canonicalization issue where the publisher had uploaded a number of pdfs from other sites to support content from specific articles. In Google Search Console (GSC), you could clearly see that Google was canonicalizing all of those pdfs to pages on other sites (knowing where the original pdfs originated).

Having a few here and there isn’t a big deal, but you have to wonder what type of signal it sends to Google when many are seen as duplicate (and Google is choosing pages from third-party sites as the canonical urls). My client determined the pdfs were not essential to the articles and nuked many of them from the site.

In addition, there were a number of pages that had canonical tags pointing at urls that didn’t resolve with 200 codes. Some were 404ing, others were redirecting, etc. Rel canonical is a strong signal to Google about which pages should be indexed and ranking, so I always recommend having accurate canonical tags.

Here is an example of Google canonicalizing pdfs to urls on other sites:

Downstream Sites and Maintaining User Happiness (and Security):
For larger-scale publishers, it’s easy to not revisit older articles over time, including checking the outbound links on those pages. And over time, you could be driving users to very strange (and risky) sites. I’ve always recommended auditing outbound links to make sure you aren’t putting your users, and essentially Google’s users, in a tough situation.

Based on the niche, this news publisher had a number of links that led to sketchy websites, and I would say even risky websites. It’s hard to say if those domains changed hands at some point, or if something else was going on, but the outbound link situation wasn’t great. My client worked on making sure outbound links were accurate, helpful, and didn’t put users at risk.

Chrome was even showing a safe browsing warning when visiting some of the downstream sites:

Search URLs and playing hide and seek with robots.txt:
When I began auditing the site, I quickly noticed that many internal search urls were showing up in the crawl data, in GSC, etc. Some were indexed, some were not, and the site’s robots.txt was supposed to be blocking them (or I thought anyway). It ends up there were many internal search urls triggered from outside the site that didn’t return any content. I saw thousands of these urls in the reporting.

But… the directory holding internal search urls was blocked by robots.txt. So what was going on?? Well, I wrote a post last year that covered how robots.txt files are by protocol and subdomain, and that’s exactly what was going on here. Basically, you can have multiple robots.txt files running at one time and the directives in each file can conflict. For this site, there were two files running on the same subdomain (based on protocol), and one blocked internal search and the other didn’t. My client cleaned this up pretty quickly.

Beyond what I covered above, there were a number of other findings surfaced during the audit. I can’t cover everything here or the post would be huge. But just understand that they tackled many different problems across the site. Some major, some minor, but all with the goal in mind of improving the site significantly over the long-term.

Liftoff in December: 149% Surge
Months went by since the last broad core update in May and my client would email me periodically to see if I had any idea when the next update was coming. I explained there’s no set timeframe for broad core updates and that we would hopefully see one soon. I told them to keep driving forward.

And then nearly seven months after the May update, the December 2020 broad core update rolled out. And it was a very, very good one for this news publisher. They surged almost immediately, and it was hockey stick growth. The site surged 149% with the update:

But that doesn’t even do the surge justice. Remember, they had almost no rankings and traffic from Google News traffic, Top Stories, or Discover. After the update, they started ranking in Top Stories and in Google News more prominently. It was awesome to see. Here is the news tab in GSC showing the growth there:

Regarding Discover, that is still a mystery to me. They still have no Discover traffic at all. I believe it could be due to the niche they cover and not necessarily the site, but it’s hard to say for sure. So, this would be the one area that didn’t surge with the update.

Case Study 2: Crushed By The December Update: It’s Like Google Doesn’t Even Know You Anymore
The next case study I’ll cover is a site that has seen its fair share of movement over the years (dating back to medieval Panda). It has been doing well recently, and even saw a nice surge during the May 2020 core update. But there was a growing, even insidious, problem that could have heavily contributed to the drop the site experienced with the December broad core update.

I can’t go into too much detail about the niche, but it’s an affiliate site with several types of content (which target a different user intent). The December update was not a good one for this site… It lost 57% of its Google organic traffic overnight starting on 12/3/20 and Google represents a majority of overall traffic. Needless to say, this is extremely problematic for the business.

I know the CEO of the company and he reached out quickly after the December update started rolling out. The drop, as you can see above, was dramatic. I had a call with the CEO, and as I learned more about their situation and setup, my “broad core update antenna” went up. I knew the site pretty well, and specific points he was making about what they had been doing recently had me concerned. I’ll cover what I can below. My hope is that they will be making big changes moving forward.

Swerving Out Of Your Lane: Major injection of thin content (and content not targeting their core competency):
I’ve mentioned the importance of “staying in your lane” several times over the years after seeing companies expand beyond their core competency and publishing content that they either didn’t have the expertise to write about, or content that could confuse Google topicality-wise. For this site, the latter was my concern.

And in addition to potentially confusing Google’s algorithms about what the site’s core competency was, a lot of the new content was thin and lower quality. This is exactly the type of content that sites should avoid having indexed. I’ve covered “quality indexing” many times in the past and this is exactly the type of content I would recommend keeping out of Google’s index. Unfortunately for this site, thousands of pages were added over time and Google was actually ranking some of it well. That’s a dangerous situation and could end up very badly SEO-wise.

Before they knew it, a big shift had happened percentage-wise for the site from an indexing standpoint. Now there was more low-quality and thin content on the site than core content. And that core content is what got them to where they were SEO-wise (performing well). And in my opinion, Google is clearly not digging that shift. Again, the site dropped by 57% since the December broad core update rolled out.

To add insult to injury, many of those thin pages contained content that expired, yet the pages remained on the site and indexable. Google was seeing some of those pages as soft 404s, while others remained in the index. So, if users were searching Google and finding those pages, the content had no chance of meeting or exceeding user expectations. Again, this was an insidious problem in my opinion. And those thin pages were causing multiple problems from an SEO standpoint.

Here was a quick site query showing close to 1,500 urls indexed that held expired content:

Beyond those findings, there were also a number of other issues that I surfaced which should be fixed. Those included the use of popups on some versions of the pages (including on mobile), more thin content across other page types, urls categorized as “crawled, not indexed” that should be handled properly (which spanned several page types), and more.

I’m still in the middle of analyzing the site, so there will be more findings. But the core point with this case is to always maintain strong quality indexing levels, make sure you don’t tip the scales with lower quality content, always make sure you can meet or exceed user expectations, and make sure technical SEO problems don’t end up causing quality problems. I hope to report back about this site after subsequent broad core updates (based on the changes the site owner decides to implement).

Case Study 3: Overcoming “The Creep”
A large-scale site in a tough niche roars back with the December update:
I can’t tell you how happy I am to be covering this recovery. This was actually one of the case studies in my post about the May 2020 core update, but as a big drop! As I mentioned in that post, many problems had crept back into the site over time. They had surged with previous major algorithm updates only to get hammered by the May 2020 core update. They dropped 41% overnight in early May.

Revisiting Core Problems: Bombarding Users With Ads
Leading up to the May broad core update, the ad situation had gotten much, much worse over time. It was extremely aggressive, disruptive, and even deceptive in some cases. This was not a new problem for the site since they had tackled aggressive ads previously (years ago). But like I said earlier, some bad problems crept back in over time.

For some pages, there were 15-20 ads per page and organized in a way that was extremely disruptive to the user experience. After sending my findings through (including many screenshots of what I was seeing), the site owner moved quickly to tone down the ad situation. That resulted in a reduction of 50% of ads per page in some situations.

Needless to say, this improved the user experience greatly on the site. And those aggressive ads were impacting performance as you can see in the Core Web Vitals reporting in GSC. CLS scores were not good. The number of urls with CLS problems is now down to 0 post-update (after the site owners worked on toning down the ad situation and improving performance overall). They also moved to AWS after the May update to improve performance for the site overall.

Large and Complex Site With Pockets of Thin Content:
In addition, there was also a thin content problem (which is common in this niche). This is also something that has been brought up in the past for this site. Once the pockets of thin content were uncovered, the site owner moved quickly to noindex or 404 as much of that content as they could (depending on the page type). This led to an increase in “quality indexing”, which is making sure only high-quality pages are indexed, while ensuring low-quality or thin content is not indexed. This is something I have written about many times and it can rear its ugly head easily on larger-scale and complex sites.

Here are some screenshots of thin content I was surfacing. Also, notice the ads + thin content in the second screenshot. That’s a lethal combination in my opinion:

The Power of Providing Unique Content For Sites With The Same, Or Very Similar Content:
In my post about the December 2020 core update, I mentioned how sites with the same, or very similar content, need to differentiate their sites as much as possible. John Mueller has covered this several times in webmaster hangout videos and I have helped a number of companies deal with this situation.

For this site, I recommended adding some type of unique and valuable content beyond what every other site was providing. Once I ran through the reasons why they should consider this, along with sending John’s video covering the issue, the site owner brainstormed a few ideas and came up with a strong solution. I can’t explain what they did specifically, but they were able to add unique content in a prominent place on core pages that was helpful for users.

Percentage-wise, this didn’t impact a large percentage of pages on the site, but it did impact some of the most popular pages. I’m hoping they roll this out to more pages as time goes on.

Here is Google’s John Mueller explaining the importance of differentiating your content as much as you can:

Technical Problems Causing Quality Problems: Mobile and Desktop Parity Issues
When digging into the site last May, I started noticing a problem with the mobile setup. This site still runs an m-dot subdomain holding the mobile pages, and I started checking for parity across mobile and desktop. What I found was alarming across some urls.

When switching to mobile, the urls were redirecting to the desktop version, but to a different url! This wasn’t site-wide and was just impacting certain urls, but needless to say, this was extremely problematic. Also, Google still hasn’t moved the site to mobile-first indexing based on the m-dot setup and the parity problems I discussed in my May 2020 case study post. For example, the pages lacked parity from a content standpoint, links standpoint, and more. So, Google’s systems are clearly having issues with moving the site to mobile-first indexing. And to clarify, there’s no ranking benefit to being moved to mobile-first indexing, but not being moved underscores the parity problems I just covered.

Since the desktop content is what’s indexed for this site, it’s hard to say how the weird redirect problem was impacting the site SEO-wise, but it’s clear this was impacting users. Once I communicated the problem to the site owner, they tackled the strange redirect problem quickly. But who knows how long that problem was in place, how many users that impacted, etc.

Beyond what I covered above, there were a number of other problems riddling the site (across several categories of issues). There were more quality problems, UX issues, technical problems causing quality problems, and more. Again, it’s a large-scale and complex site with many moving parts (and it’s in a tough niche). The site owner moved to make as many changes as possible.

And by the way, they still have a huge change in the works. As I mentioned earlier, they run an m-dot now (which is not optimal), but they have a responsive version of the site ready to launch soon! So theoretically, things will get even better over time usability-wise, site maintenance-wise, etc. Needless to say, I’m eager to see that go live.

Happy Holidays! The December Update Comes Roaring Through…
Since you can’t (typically) see a recovery in between broad core updates, the site owner fixed as much as they could and kept driving forward. The site owner was fully aware that they probably needed to wait for the next broad core update to see significant movement in the right direction and hoped for the best.

Well, the December update didn’t disappoint!

Within 24 hours of the rollout, the site absolutely started to surge. The site is up 40% since the December update. It’s been amazing to watch and it underscores how a “kitchen sink” approach to remediation worked well for this client.

Also, they are moving to a responsive design soon, which will alleviate parity problems across mobile and desktop and hopefully get them moved to mobile-first indexing soon. Again, there’s no ranking benefit to getting moved to mobile-first indexing, but it decreases the number of issues that can arise based on maintaining two pages for every one on the site. Also, mobile-first indexing will be enabled for all sites in March of 2021, so I’d love to see them with a solid setup and possibly moved before that date.

Moving Forward: Another List of Tips and Recommendations for Site Owners
As you can see via the case studies I covered, broad core updates are complex and nuanced. Google is evaluating many factors across a site and over the long-term. When a site is negatively impacted by a broad core update, there’s never going to be one thing a site can surface that’s causing the drop. Instead, it’s often a combination of issues that is dragging the site down.

Below, I’ll cover some final bullets for site owners that are dealing with negative impact from broad core updates.

• Relevancy adjustment? – First understand whether or not there was a major relevancy adjustment, which could be correct. For example, was your site ranking for queries it had no right ranking for? There’s not much you can do about that… But if it’s not a relevancy adjustment, then dig into your site to surface all potential issues that could be causing problems.
• The power of user studies – To understand how real users feel about your site, content, expertise, etc., run a user study through the lens of broad core updates. I’ve written a case study about doing this that you can review, Google recommends running user studies for this purpose, and it makes sense on multiple levels. I can’t tell you how powerful it can be to receive objective feedback from real users.
• Never one smoking gun – Avoid looking for one smoking gun. You won’t find it. Instead, objectively analyze your site and surface all potential problems that could be causing issues. Then form a plan of attack for fixing them all (or as many as you can).
• Recovery – Understand you (typically) cannot recover until another broad core update rolls out. I have covered this in previous posts and in my SMX Virtual presentation about broad core updates. So, don’t roll out the right changes only to roll them back after a few weeks. That’s not how this works. You will end up spinning your wheels.
• Read the Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG) – There’s a boatload of amazing information directly from Google about what they deem high versus low quality. The document is 175 pages of SEO gold.
• Recovery Without Remediation – Understand that some sites recover without performing any remediation. That can definitely happen since there are millions of baby algorithms working together to output a score. In my opinion, if you don’t significantly improve your site over the long-term, you leave your site susceptible to seeing negative impact down the line. That’s why you can see the yo-yo effect that some sites experience (as they sit in the gray area of Google’s algorithms). That’s a maddening place to live for site owners. I would try and improve as much as possible.

Summary – Google’s Broad Core Updates Are Complex and Nuanced
I hope you found the case studies I covered interesting. One thing is for sure, they underscore the complexity and nuance of Google’s broad core updates. If you have been negatively impacted by a broad core update, then I recommend reading several of my posts about core updates, form a plan of attack for thoroughly analyzing your site through the lens of those updates, and then work to significantly improve your site over time. You can absolutely recover, but it takes time, hard work, and patience. Good luck.

GG

Back To Table of Contents

Read part one of this series on the December 2020 broad core update.

Well, we waited nearly seven months, but it finally arrived (and right in the middle of the holiday shopping season). Google rolled out another broad core update on December 3, 2020, and as we expected, it was a huge update. The last broad core update was May 4, 2020 so we waited nearly seven months in between updates. I’ll explain more about why the time in between updates is important soon.

A Big Update Warrants A Two-Part Series:
I was going to write one post about the update, including the case studies, but as I was writing it I thought a two-part series would fit much better. In this first post I’ll cover a number of important topics regarding the December update and about broad core updates overall. For example, I’ll cover the rollout, timing, and early movement. I’ll also cover tremors, which yielded some reversals for certain websites. Then I’ll move into (more) important points for site owners to understand about broad core updates, including information from my SMX Virtual presentation which focused on broad core updates.

Then in part two of the series, I’ll cover three case studies that underscore the complexity and nuance of Google’s broad core updates. That’s in addition to the four I already covered in my post about the May 2020 broad core update. Each case is unique and provides an interesting view of how certain sites are impacted by these updates and how site owners responded. I’ll also end each post with tips and recommendations for site owners that have been impacted by the December update (or any broad core update for that matter).

Here is a quick table of contents if you want to jump around to a specific part of this post. I recommend reading it from start to finish to understand all of the context about broad core updates, but I understand that everyone is short on time.

The December Broad Core Update: Table of Contents

• Rollout and Timing.
• Google Goldilocks and the Holiday Shopping Season.
• Tremors and Reversals.
• Alternative Medicine Impact.
• e-Commerce Movement.
• Online Games, Lyrics, Coupons and other sites with the same or very similar content.
• (More) important points for site owners to understand about core updates.
• “Hell hath no fury like a user scorned” and Aggressive Ads.
• Yo-Yo Trending and The Gray Area of Google’s Algorithms.
• Technical SEO problems causing quality problems.
• Discover and Top Stories Visibility.
• Content is King.
• The A in E-A-T.
• Site Issues and “The Usual Suspects”.
• BERT and Broad Core Updates.
• Machine Learning and “It Depends”.
• Tips and Recommendations.

Rollout and Timing:
Danny Sullivan announced the broad core update on December 3, 2020 and linked to Google’s own blog post about core updates for reference. Soon after, Danny announced the update began rolling out at 1PM ET on 12/3 and that the update could take a week or two to fully roll out.

Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the December 2020 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog post for more about that:https://t.co/e5ZQUAlt0G

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 3, 2020

And then we finally heard from Danny again that the rollout was complete on 12/16/20. So that’s about two weeks to fully roll out, which made sense.

The December 2020 Core Update rollout is complete.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 16, 2020

Google Goldilocks & The Holiday Shopping Season – Not Too Early, Not Too Late, Just Right For Most Site Owners
The timing of this update was a bit controversial. Some thought that with the pandemic surging and the holiday shopping season upon us, that Google should not roll out such as big update. I get that, but there were also many site owners that have been waiting since the May broad core update to see recovery. Heck, there were some that had been hit by the January core update that didn’t recover in May that were waiting for this update. So although I see both sides, I’m in the camp that the timing was fair.

In my SMX Virtual presentation about broad core updates from 12/8 (which was crazy timing since it was literally right after the December update rolled out), I explained that Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday had passed already. So, sites that might be negatively impacted by the December core update could have benefited from those big shopping days even if they were going to drop. And for those waiting for recovery, they missed those important shopping days since they were down, but could potentially recover for the remaining holiday shopping season. Needless to say, it was tricky for Google, but I believe the timing was fair.

John Mueller About The Timing and Passage-based Ranking
It’s also worth noting that Google’s John Mueller explained in a Search Central Hangout (at 5:43 in the video) that although he wasn’t involved in the decision about the timing, he thought it seemed fair. He also answered a question about passage-based ranking and if it rolled out with the December update. John explained that a change like passage-based ranking would typically not be bundled with something like a broad core update. He also didn’t believe it rolled out yet, although Google had explained it could roll out before the end of the year. So stay tuned about passage-based ranking. Here is my slide from SMX about this:

The December 2020 Core Update: Interesting Observations From The Front Lines
Google is looking at many factors with broad core updates, and over an extended period of time. They have explained this many times and I have shared this often on Twitter, in presentations, in my blog posts about core updates, etc. For example, Google’s Paul Haahr, a lead ranking engineer at Google, explained at the webmaster conference in Mt. View that they complete an extraordinary amount of evaluation in between broad core updates. Actually, they do so much evaluation in between that it can be a bottleneck to rolling them out more often. And check the last bullet point about decoupling algorithms and running them separately. Yep, welcome to SEO. :)

Google is trying to understand a site overall, and across many factors. This is why it’s very hard to identify specific things that changed with broad core updates. And it’s also why it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on with a certain website unless you work on it, understand the fully history of the site, problems it had over time, improvements that have been implemented, etc.

In my post about the May core update, I covered how Google’s Gary Illyes explained that Google’s core ranking algorithm is made up of “millions of baby algorithms working together to output a score”. That’s super important to understand and it’s why you cannot focus on just one or two things when analyzing and improving your site. It’s much broader than that, pun intended. My slide from SMX Virtual underscored this point:

This is also why I provided four case studies in my post about the May 2020 core update, which underscored the complexity and nuance involved with broad core updates. On that note, part two of this series covers three more cases based on the December update.

I just wanted to bring up the complexity of broad core updates so you don’t focus too narrowly when reviewing your site or other sites that were impacted.

Before we move forward, a quick disclaimer:
I do not work for Google. I do not have access to Google’s core ranking algorithm. I did not dress up as a Fedex employee and try to force my way into Gary Illyes’ home to commandeer his laptop holding all of Google’s secrets. Broad core updates are very complex and it’s hard to write a post that covers all of the things I’m seeing, the complexity of the updates, and the nuance involved. With that out of the way, let’s get started.

Quick movement, very quick, almost too quick:
Once a broad core update rolls out, it’s typically a few days before we see a lot of movement across sites. But with the December update, we saw movement very quickly (within 24 hours). A number of people (myself included) were sharing hourly trending from Google Analytics of sites beginning to see impact from the update. For example:

Many sites that were impacted saw a ton of movement (either surging or dropping) right after the update on 12/4 and 12/5. Then it calmed down a bit. It was almost too calm after that first wave of volatility. But then 12/9 came around. I’ll cover that volatility in the next section.

Here are two examples of surges and drops after the update rolled out. Some were dramatic and I’ll be covering more about this in the case studies in part two of the series. Both examples below are very interesting cases by the way.

Tremors and Reversals:
Again, I kept thinking to myself that this was quick… almost too quick, which also reminded me of an important point that John Mueller confirmed years ago about major algorithm updates. After medieval Panda updates rolled out, I would sometimes see strange fluctuations after the rollout. For example, distinct and large changes in rankings several days after the rollout (sometimes even reversing course).

When I asked John about this, he explained that Google can implement smaller tweaks after major algorithm updates roll out based on what they were seeing. That made complete sense and I called them “Panda tremors” at the time. I’m sure the same approach applies with broad core updates and I believe we actually saw that with the December 2020 update. Starting on 12/9, we saw a lot of additional volatility, with many sites seeing more movement in the same direction. For example:

And here is John explaining more about what I call “tremors”:

But, we also saw some sites reverse course. And some completely reverse course. It was wild to see. Once I shared what I was seeing, I had a number of companies reach out to me explaining that was happening with their own sites! And several were sending screenshots from Google Analytics and Google Search Console (GSC) showing the reversals.

As you can imagine, this was incredibly disappointing for those site owners (and tough for them to experience). Imagine thinking you were surging with the update, only to drop back down to where you were before the update (and some dropped even further!) Here are some screenshots of the reversals from GSC and Google Analytics:

And here is what search visibility looks like for one of those sites. Insane:

Major Affiliate Impact with Reversals:
It’s worth noting that a number of affiliate sites saw massive volatility with the December update, and even more than usual (in my opinion). And some were impacted by the reversals I just covered. And then within affiliate marketing, those focused on health and medical saw a ton of volatility.

On that note, I mentioned an important point in my SMX Virtual slides about affiliate marketing and health/medical sites. I explained that YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) content is held to a higher standard. And when you mix commerce or affiliate marketing with health and medical, there’s a fine line between educating and selling. I saw a number of sites in this situation get absolutely smoked by the December 2020 core update. Beware.

Some Alternative Medicine Sites See Improvement, But Still Down Big-time From Previous Levels:
There were some alternative medicine sites that saw very nice increases with the December core update. If you remember, many of these sites have seen significant drops in the past, especially starting with the Medic Update in August of 2018. That was interesting to see, but you must zoom out to see how far they have come back (or not). Although some did see nice increases during this update, they are still way below where they were previously. Just an interesting side note.

For example, here’s a nice bump in visibility during the December update, but it pales in comparison to where the site once was.

A home remedy sub-niche as a microcosm of alt medicine volatility:
I also surfaced a great example that demonstrates the insane volatility a specific niche can see with broad core updates. Within alternative medicine, there is a home remedy sub-niche which many sites focus on. This space saw an incredible amount of volatility, with many sites dropping off a cliff. As with many home remedies, there are some claims being made that aren’t backed by science and can be dangerous to follow. Remember, YMYL content is held to a higher standard.

Here are some examples of the volatility in that niche:

Some Major e-Commerce Players Surge and Drop:
Remember I mentioned the timing of this update earlier? Well, some major e-commerce sites did not fare well during the update. The only good thing for them is that at least it wasn’t right before Thanksgiving week with Black Friday and Cyber Monday approaching. Although they dropped, other e-commerce sites waiting to recover were able to gain visibility during the holiday season. Again, I think this was fair. Some sites were waiting for nearly seven months to recover.

Here are two big players in e-commerce with very different outcomes based on the December update:

Online Games, Lyrics, and Coupons With Major Volatility (and a warning to sites with the same, or very similar content to other sites):
I wanted to mention the online games niche for a minute (and other categories like it). It’s a tough area since many of the sites contain the same or very similar content. I also covered this situation in my SMX Virtual presentation.

Google’s John Mueller has explained that if you provide the same content, or very similar content, to many other sites on the web, then it’s hard for Google’s algorithms to determine which site should rank. And that can lead to a lot of volatility over time. It’s super important to differentiate your site as much as you can.

I have provided my tweet below where I linked to a video from John Mueller explaining this. I also included the video below (which starts at 39:32).

Run a site that has the same exact content as other sites (like ringtones)? Via @johnmu: It's tricky b/c our algos look for unique, compelling, & high-quality sites. G's algos might not believe it's an important site that needs to be highlighted in Search: https://t.co/rP4PHLc9fH pic.twitter.com/ErQ9bnMUnG

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 13, 2020

Well, the online games niche saw some crazy movement with the December update. If your site is in this situation (having the same or very similar content to many other sites), then I highly recommend trying to differentiate your site as much as possible, provide some type of value-add for users, etc. If not, you can end up seeing similar visibility trending to the examples below. Unfortunately, there will be razor-thin margins between sites (scoring-wise and rankings-wise). Beware.

News Publisher Volatility:
There are always many moving parts with large-scale news sites. Millions of pages indexed, tens of millions of pages when you take into account each site’s crawlable footprint, maybe an advertising situation that can be aggressive and disruptive, sites trying to strike a balance between information, UX, and monetization. I’ve helped many news publishers over the years and there are typically many things I surface during those audits to improve.

Here is some volatility from the space (and this is before the Page Experience Signal rolls out, which is May 2021). I bring that up since news sites often have many issues based on the factors and sub-factors involved with the Page Experience Signal (so it should be interesting to see how news publishers are impacted once it rolls out). I also covered the sub-signals in a Web Story earlier this year if you want to learn more about those.

More Key Points About Broad Core Updates & My SMX Virtual Presentation:
In my post about the May 2020 broad core update, I included several important points for site owners to understand about Google’s broad core updates. Those points seemed to resonate with site owners, since the topic is extremely nuanced and site owners can end up confused about how they roll out, what Google is evaluating, and when you can see recovery.

I included those in my SMX Virtual presentation as well (presented on 12/8), but I also added more items to the list. I’ll include those additional points below. I definitely recommend reading my post about the May broad core update so you can understand all of the key points about these updates.

First, the points I covered in my May post include:

• There’s Never One Smoking Gun – When reviewing a site that’s been heavily impacted by a broad core update, there’s never one smoking gun, there’s typically a battery of them.
• Relevancy Adjustments – Google can implement relevancy adjustments during broad core updates, which aren’t necessarily a bad thing for your site. Dig into the drop and objectively figure out if there were major relevancy adjustments (like your site ranking for queries it had no right ranking for), or if there are deeper issues at play.
• “Millions of baby algorithms…” – Google’s Gary Illyes explained at Pubcon in 2019 that Google’s core ranking algorithm is comprised of “millions of baby algorithms working together to output a score”. I love that quote and it’s why you can never pinpoint one issue that’s riddling a site from a broad core update standpoint.
• Recovery – You typically cannot recover until another broad core update rolls out. This is super important to understand. If your site has been heavily impacted by a broad core update, you will need to significantly improve the site over the long-term. That’s what Google is looking for and you (typically) can only see that reflected during subsequent broad core updates.
• Recent Changes Not Reflected – Recent changes will not be reflected in broad core updates. Google’s John Mueller has explained this in the past, and even again in a recent Search Central Hangout. For example, changes you implement 2-3 weeks before a broad core update will typically not be reflected in that update. Google is evaluating many factors over a long period of time with broad core updates. It’s not about that recent tweak or change you made.

And now based on my SMX Virtual presentation, I’m including some additional important points that site owners should understand about broad core updates. Again, these are foundational points that you should understand before tackling remediation:

Aggressive Ads and “Hell hath no fury like a user scorned”:
I continue to see terrible user experiences across many sites heavily impacted by broad core updates. Aggressive, disruptive, and deceptive ads yield a terrible UX for many people. Don’t do this. You can pay a heavy price. Google has even mentioned aggressive ads in its own blog post about broad core updates. Always remember, and respect, your users.

Below is a slide from my SMX presentation where I cover a common pitfall I see with sites impacted heavily by broad core updates. This was about one specific site, but I see this often.

The Gray Area of Google’s Algorithms (and Yo-Yo Trending):
For sites surfing the gray area of Google’s algorithms, it’s easy to continue to surge and drop during subsequent broad core updates. For example, dropping in January, surging in May, only to drop again in December (or vice versa). That’s why it’s super important to significantly improve your site overall over the long-term. You want to clearly get out of the gray area so you can limit volatility down the line. There are many examples of sites that either haven’t improved significantly, or that injected more problems into their sites that continue to see this type of movement.

And on the flip side, there were definitely sites that did nothing to improve and surged. But in my opinion, unless they get out of the gray area, they could very well see drops again. I’ve covered the gray area heavily in the past and it’s a maddening place to live for site owners. I will also cover a very special case study in part two of this series that fell into this category.

Beware Technical SEO Problems Causing Quality Problems:
There were several examples I picked up with the December broad core update of this happening and it can be sinister, since it can sit below the surface without site owners realizing it’s happening. I actually covered this in my SMX Virtual presentation as well, and I received several questions in the Q&A about clarifying what I’m referring to.

To clarify, I’m NOT talking about basic technical SEO problems. I’m referring to technical SEO problems that cause quality issues. Google is on record explaining that every page indexed is taken into account when evaluating quality. So, if you have pockets of pages that get published due to technical SEO problems, and those pages are low quality and/or thin, and they get indexed, then that’s what I’m referring to.

For example, stripping noindex out for thousands of low-quality pages by accident, having major canonical problems and Google indexing many additional pages that shouldn’t be indexed, mistakenly using parameters or session IDs causing Google to find many additional low quality urls, so on and so forth. This is why it’s incredibly important to thoroughly analyze your site through the lens of broad core updates. If you miss those underlying problems, you can spin your wheels having no idea what’s going on.

It’s also worth noting that Google’s John Mueller presented at SMX Virtual and gave some tips for 2021. In those tips, he explained that in 2021 and beyond, sites that are “technically better” have an advantage. Sometimes that’s a small advantage, but it can be bigger depending on the niche. He said it’s good to get that advantage. Remember, content is king, but strive for strong technical SEO. Here’s a tweet I shared when covering John’s presentation from SMX Virtual:

Sites that are "technically better" (I'm assuming technical SEO here) have an advantage. Sometimes that's a small advantage, but can be bigger depending on the niche. It's good to get that advantage. Remember, content is king, but strive for strong technical SEO. pic.twitter.com/bg3M4Vuc9y

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 8, 2020

Google Discover and Top Stories Visibility Can Be Impacted:
I’ve covered this before and it’s important to understand that both Discover and Top Stories visibility can be impacted by broad core updates. So if Google’s Discover feed or Top Stories feature are important for your business, then you should take a hard look at your visibility after a broad core update rolls out.

For example, here are some examples of Discover traffic impacted after a broad core update. Notice the distinct upticks in clicks and impressions right after a broad core update rolls out:

And here is Top Stories visibility for a site after the December update. Note, they never were in Top Stories before at all. They ranked pretty well in Google News, but have struggled to break into Top Stories. This was a great sign for the company, which has been working hard to improve (after getting hit in 2019 by a broad core update, recovering during a subsequent update, and continuing to improve since then). It’s not a lot of visibility, but again, they were never in Top Stories before (ever):

Content is King: Extremely Relevant Content Can Rank Despite Other Problems
Google is always looking to surface the highest quality and most relevant content for each query. Google has reiterated that site owners should focus on building the best content based on what users are searching for. Don’t overlook this point.

Great content can still win despite the site having other major issues. This is why you can see some sites with many issues still ranking and not being impacted heavily by core updates. There are many factors being evaluated and if a site produces the most relevant content for users, Google can still end up ranking that site highly across queries. You can also see this with sites that have a ton of authority. They can rank despite having other issues.

This is also why it’s important to not blindly follow other sites that seem to be doing well. You might follow them right off a cliff. Your site is different than theirs. You might not get away with what they get away with. And if you don’t, you could end up dropping heavily when a broad core update rolls out.

The A in E-A-T and the Power of the Right Links:
When analyzing specific drops and gains in a vertical, it’s sometimes apparent that certain sites have an enormous amount of authority (and other less authoritative sites have trouble competing against them). For example, Google has explained that the A in E-A-T is heavily influenced by PageRank (or links from around the web). They explained this in a whitepaper on fighting disinformation that was published in 2019 (screenshots are below).

Also, Google’s Gary Illyes once explained at Pubcon that E-A-T was largely based on links and mentions from well-known sites. So when Google is trying to understand how authoritative a site is, then having the right links matter. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. And that’s why you can’t easily fix this situation if you currently don’t have a lot of authority…

For example, you can’t just go out and get links and mentions from powerful sites across the web (like CNN, The New York Times, or even smaller sites within a niche that have a lot of authority). You have to earn that naturally over time by doing the right things content-wise, promotion-wise, etc.

It’s worth noting I saw this in action with the December broad core update. I compared a site that had been hit hard with the sites that now rank in the top spots and it was very clear there was an authority difference there. One site had less than 1K links total and not many from extremely authoritative sites, while the others had millions of links, including many from some of the most authoritative sites on the web.

Below is a screenshot from Majestic’s Solo Links where you can compare the top links from each site. It’s never about one thing… but it can be hard to compete against sites with massive amounts of authority.

Below you can see some of the top domains that are linking to another site that is ranking well across many of the top queries, but not linking to the site that dropped. Again, it’s never about one thing, but authority matters:

The Usual Suspects:
I have covered this many times in my posts about core updates, but it’s worth mentioning here again. If you are looking for ways to improve your site, then it’s important to keep a look out for what I call “The Usual Suspects”. It’s a great movie, but it’s not so great for core updates. :)

Google is on record that it wants to see significant improvement in quality over the long-term to see gains during subsequent core updates. That’s why it’s important to surface all potential issues and address as many as you can. This ties with the “Kitchen Sink” approach to remediation, which I have covered in many of my posts about broad core updates.

For example, I would:

• Hunt down all low-quality or thin content on the site and address that.
• Rectify any user experience barriers on the site.
• Make sure you don’ have an aggressive, disruptive, or deceptive advertising experience (I mentioned this earlier).
• Review the site from an E-A-T perspective (expertise, authoritativeness, and trust). i.e. The site may lack E-A-T, which is a nuanced topic that confuses many site owners. Also, E-A-T is weighted heavier for YMYL queries, so it’s super important to understand this if you focus on a YMYL topic.
• Hunt down technical SEO problems that cause quality problems. I covered this earlier.
• And again, understand there could be relevance adjustments, which might be correct. For example, maybe your site was ranking for queries it had no right ranking for. If Google pushes a relevancy adjustment impacting those, then that’s fine. There’s nothing for you to do there.

Are Broad Core Updates Related To BERT?
There has been some confusion in the industry about whether broad core updates were related to BERT. If you’re not familiar with BERT, it’s an AI natural language processing (NLP) algorithm that helps Google understand queries and content better. Google announced the rollout in October of 2019 and called it one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search. It is now used for nearly 100% of English queries conducted on Google.

Regarding broad core updates and how they are related to BERT, Google’s Danny Sullivan replied to Barry Schwartz on Twitter that the two are unrelated. So to be clear, broad core updates have nothing to do with BERT directly.

No, it's not.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 22, 2020

This makes complete sense. Google is evaluating many factors with broad core updates, and over an extended period of time. Remember, there’s never one smoking gun. There’s typically a battery of them. And I have covered a lot in this post related to that statement! So yes, BERT is important, but it’s not related to broad core updates.

Machine Learning and “It Depends”:
And there’s one more topic I wanted to cover before wrapping up part one of this series. Both Google and Bing have explained recently that they are using machine learning in Search in various capacities. That’s where they identify the signals, identify the desired outcomes, and then let machine learning figure out the weighting of those signals. Yes, they let machine learning determine the weighting of those signals.

That’s extremely important to understand and it’s why you might hear Google and Bing representatives say “it depends” when answering a question about how important something is. They literally don’t know the weighting, and the weighting can actually change over time. You can listen to Bing’s Fabrice Canel explain this in the 302 of a Kind podcast with Marcus Tandler and Izzi Smith (at 35:02 in the video).

This is also why it’s important to simply improve your site overall. Don’t focus on one or two things. Significantly improve your site over the long-term. That’s what both Google and Bing want to see.

Coming Soon: Part 2 of the Series with 3 (More) Case Studies That Emphasize The Complexity of Broad Core Updates
As I explained earlier in the post, part two of this series covers three interesting case studies based on the December 2020 broad core update. My hope is that between part one and two, and my post about the May core update, site owners can have a strong understanding of what Google is doing with these core updates, as well as how certain sites tackled being impacted by previous updates.

Moving forward: Tips and recommendations for site owners impacted by broad core updates
If you have been impacted by the December broad core update, or a previous core update, then definitely read the following bullets containing some tips and recommendations. I know it can be frustrating to see a big drop in visibility and I hope you find these bullets helpful.

• Improve your site overall, don’t cherry-pick changes. Google wants to see significant improvement in quality over the long-term.
• Remember there are “millions of baby algorithms” working together. Don’t miss the forest through the trees. Objectively surface all potential issues that could be impacting the site.
• Use a “kitchen sink” approach to remediation. Fix it all (or as much as you can).
• Conduct a user-study through the lens of broad core updates. I can’t emphasize enough how powerful this can be. Read my case study and form a plan of attack. Hearing from real users can help you identify issues you could easily miss. You might be too close to your own site.
• Read and internalize information about E-A-T. I mentioned in my SMX Virtual presentation that both Lily Ray and Marie Haynes have published some excellent information about E-A-T. I recommend going through those articles and presentations.
• Read the Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG). Then read it again. It contains 175 pages of SEO Gold. It’s a document published by Google that explains what it considers high versus low quality, what raters should look at while evaluating sites, and much more. If you haven’t read it, I think you will find it enlightening. :)
• If you are impacted by a broad core update, you will typically need to wait for another broad core update to see recovery. So don’t roll out changes for a few weeks and then roll them back (after not seeing recovery). That’s not how it works. Google is on record explaining you (typically) will not see recovery until another broad core update rolls out, and only if you have significantly improved the site.
• And most importantly… DON’T GIVE UP. You can absolutely recover from these updates. It just takes a lot of work and time.

Part 2 Coming Soon With Three Case Studies:
And remember, part two of this series contains three case studies based on sites impacted by the December broad core update. Each case provides a unique view of how broad core updates can impact a site, how site owners responded, how those situations ended up, and more. You can subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter to be notified about the next post.

GG

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