In a rare instance, Google announced its major rollout for a June 2019 core algorithm updates ahead of time. Unfortunately, from the experiences in the past, no one really trusted that Google wouldn’t have a few surprises in stock.
Now that the rollout is complete and has hit all of their data centers, we at Focus DMG can finally take a look at the impact and begin to respond. Get ready to make a few critical adjustments to your site and your content. However, you’ll be pleased to see that a few things haven’t changed!
Video Becomes Even Easier to Access
Very similar to the Google June 2018 rollout, the appearance of video carousels on search engine results pages has spiked again with the June 2019 core update. Now it’s estimated that video carousels show up in about 61% of desktop searches.
Google Targets Content – Of Course
Not that this was a surprise to anyone, but Google constantly issues updates for content. They target sites with low-quality content, drop them off first and even second-page results, they remove authority if it’s present.
The underlying issue here is perception. From a webmaster or content creator’s standpoint, it seems that Google’s concept of quality content changes from one update to the next. However, when you take the alternative perception and look at it from Google’s or even the user’s side, content quality is pretty static.
The questions that come up with creating high-quality content are:
- How long can this piece of content stay relevant?
- Does this content contain facts that attribute reputable sources?
- Is the site sacrificing quality for quantity?
- Is your content valuable to the readers within your vertical?
These questions can help guide webmasters and content creators. In fact, it’s the only guide that they’ll receive. John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, often provides insight into how to optimize but reiterates again and again that updates don’t focus on targeting specific bits of text within content either positively or negatively.
Mueller even goes so far as to say that Google does not assign a clear authority metric for individual sites. That everything comes back to the quality of the content.
By analyzing the data, we are able to better understand and adjust to the changes of an algorithm update.
Finance and News Sites
The finance and news verticals seem to have experienced the most significant impact from the June 2019 core update. Rankings are still changing by the day as the rollout only concluded on June 8th and came with a diversity update at the same time.
When looking at what finance and news sites do, compared to the information from John Mueller on content quality, the changes are reasonably expected.
Finance and news sites typically do not post evergreen content, will often publish material multiple times through the day, will likely have a massive range of writers with varying levels of quality and often don’t attribute their sources directly.
Does that mean that their content is not valuable? No, of course not. But Google may have finally decided to segment sites that use this methodology as a niche rather than a generalized site that benefits everyone.
Another reason that this particular update may have had such an impact on finance and news sites is there goal to provide more diverse search results. It’s been brought up over the last few years that SERPs will often show five or six top results all from one site.
Google’s latest update will set a limit of no more than two results from the same domain in top results.
An Overall Glance
When you look past the speculation that this update is reverting last year’s medic update or acting to create an unstable flux purposefully, this update is pretty straight forward. No, the update did not revert changes from the medic update. No, Google would not benefit from random fluctuation in any way.
This core update was huge, but more than anything, it seemed like a bit of housecleaning. If you’re noticing substantial changes perform a content audit. Remove, archive, or update any content that isn’t relevant and valuable.
If you have questions or need help in managing or bouncing back from the June 2019 Core update from Google, call us today.
