{"id":2652,"date":"2020-05-15T07:05:19","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T11:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gsqi.com\/marketing-blog\/?p=2652"},"modified":"2022-07-20T06:17:20","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T10:17:20","slug":"may-2020-google-core-update-case-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gsqi.com\/marketing-blog\/may-2020-google-core-update-case-studies\/","title":{"rendered":"The May 2020 Google Core Update – 4 Case Studies That Emphasize The Complexity Of Broad Core Algorithm Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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{Update July 2022: I just published my post about the May 2022 broad core update<\/a> with five micro-case studies covering drops and surges.}

On Monday May 4, 2020 Google pushed another broad core update, which are only released three to four times per year. They are huge updates, global, and can have a significant impact for sites across categories and countries. Although the update can take about two weeks to fully roll out, you can usually begin to see impact within a few days. And we saw impact even quicker with this update. For example, we saw big swings in rankings and traffic on May 5th<\/sup>, just one day after the update rolled out.

In this post, I\u2019ll first cover some key points related to core updates, since I\u2019m hearing a lot of confusion from site owners about certain topics. These points are important for site owners to understand for several reasons and I\u2019ll cover those below. After going through those topics, I\u2019ll cover four case studies that provide some valuable lessons about core updates, about the need for continual monitoring and improvement, and what happens when you don\u2019t nip SEO problems in the bud. Above all, the cases emphasize the complexity of Google\u2019s broad core updates.

The four cases include a recovery from a previous core update, a site seeing (mostly) long-term wins during core updates, a massive drop during the May core update, and then a recovery from a non-core<\/strong> update during the May 2020 core update.

Clearing Up Some Confusion About Core Updates
<\/strong>When core updates roll out, it can be very confusing and stressful for site owners. And you can see that confusion in many of the questions that are being asked across the web, along with the questions that are sent to me privately (via email, Twitter direct messages, Facebook messages, LinkedIn, etc.)

I\u2019ve covered core updates<\/a> many times in my previous posts<\/a>, so those posts<\/a> always a good place<\/a> to learn more about how broad core updates work. That said, I\u2019ll organize some key points below that site owners should be aware of in order to make sound decisions about how to move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. There\u2019s Never One Smoking Gun, There\u2019s Typically A Battery Of Them
<\/strong>If you\u2019ve read my previous posts about core updates, then you probably know this one already. With core updates, Google is taking many factors <\/strong>into account over an extended period of time. Based on what Google has said many times, and what I have seen in the field while helping companies that have been impacted, there\u2019s never one or two problems that cause negative impact. Instead, there\u2019s usually a battery of problems across the site. In addition, Google always pushes relevance adjustments, which aren\u2019t necessarily a bad thing. More about that soon.

Regarding problems that could be causing negative impact, they span content quality, user experience, aggressive, disruptive, or deceptive advertising, technical SEO problems that cause quality problems, and more. In addition, Google is always looking to surface the most authoritative content written by experts in a niche. And that\u2019s especially true for what Google calls \u201cYour Money or Your Life\u201d (YMYL) content. So on top of what I already mentioned, there could be several issues related to expertise, authoritativeness, and trust (E-A-T) which is heavily covered in Google\u2019s quality rater guidelines<\/a> and in their blog post about core updates<\/a>.

Based on what I just explained, it\u2019s not uncommon to surface many issues on a site that\u2019s been negatively impacted, and across a number of categories. That\u2019s why I recommend using \u201cThe Kitchen Sink<\/a>\u201d approach to remediation, which involves surfacing all potential problems on a site and fixing as many as you possibly can (all of them if that\u2019s possible). I’ll cover this in the case studies later in this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Relevance Adjustments
<\/strong>Beyond the problems I listed above, there are always relevance adjustments during core updates. That\u2019s when rankings can drop when content just isn\u2019t as relevant anymore for a query. As an example, you can often see this happen on news publisher sites that might have an article ranking for super-competitive head terms for a given subject (like a person\u2019s name, a company name, movie, TV show, event, etc.)

As time goes on, that article might not be as relevant anymore and rankings drop. Those types of adjustments aren\u2019t necessarily a bad thing. It\u2019s just important to distinguish between relevance adjustments and when you have major problems throughout a site. And you might have a combination of both (many sites often do).

For example, see the ranking changes for head terms below for a news site:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3. \u201cMillions of baby algorithms\u201d
<\/strong>Gary Illyes<\/a> from Google once explained that its core ranking algorithm is made up of \u201cmillions of baby algorithms working together to output a score.\u201d I love that quote and it makes complete sense. This is also why you shouldn\u2019t just focus on just one or two factors. You should look at your site holistically and surface all potential problems\u2026 and then fix them all if that’s possible. That\u2019s also why I recommend running user studies through the lens of core updates<\/a>. You can learn a lot about your site when you have real people provide real feedback based on traversing your site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The core algorithm is a collection of probably millions of small algorithms that look for signals in pages or links that could be conceptualized as EAT. There's no core component that specifically targets EAT. @methode<\/a> #Pubcon<\/a><\/p>— Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) October 10, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote>