What You Need To Know About Google’s May 2020 Core Algorithm Update
Have you noticed a fluctuation in traffic or rankings since early this month? If so, you’re not alone. While there could be a number of reasons this is happening to your specific site, it will possibly be down to Google releasing a core update.
If you have been following Google’s best practices and producing good quality content, avoiding low quality links and maintaining your website to provide the best user experience, you’re in an excellent position to get through this core update and the next.
Whenever a new update is released, people like to categorise the areas most affected. Some of the biggest winners so far have been News, Business and Online communities, such as Pinterest. Conversely, some of the biggest losers have been Travel, Property and Entertainment websites.
Nobody can ignore the most confusing part of this update – Google deciding to launch it in the middle of a global pandemic.
With this in mind, it’s no surprise that Travel-focused sites have taken a hit as most people are not booking holidays or researching destinations right now. Also with News outlets, most households are regularly looking for updates on lockdown measures and the coronavirus, so it makes sense that they would be seeing the benefits of increased searches, update or no update. This is what makes it so frustrating to gauge the real impact of this update.
It’s being made far more difficult to analyse results because of what’s happening in the world. Would News outlets have seen such a big increase if people weren’t continually checking for more updates? Would Travel sites have dropped off so much if everyone was still able to go on holiday? Any conclusions made have to be considered, with us asking the question “Is this a result of the Google update or a result of changes in user behaviour due to the pandemic?”
Don’t panic
As with any update, it’s important to remember that it’s early days yet as it was only announced on May 4th. It can take two weeks from this date to see the full impact and Google has only just confirmed the update has finished rolling out. It will be some months before we have an exact picture of who was affected the most.
The best way to weather any Google update is, as always: don’t panic.
Do you have a question about the Google update or your site’s performance during the pandemic? We can help you figure out what’s happening and create a strategy to get everything back to normal.
