On 24th September, 2019, through its Twitter handle, @searchliaison, Google announced that a core algorithm update has been rolled out in September and may take a few days to completely roll out.

 

Here is what you need to know about the September Core Update

As many of us know, each day Google rolls out some tweaks and changes to their current algorithms and designs to improve the search results. These updates may be irrelevant in the larger context but incrementally help Google make their search engine better.

Sometimes, the core updates are noticeable (like the one in June 2019) and in such cases, Google pre-confirms such updates so that webmasters and content creators could take appropriate actions.

As per Google, the core update rolled out in September does not target any specific sites and web pages. Instead, the changes focus on evaluating the overall quality of the content and provide authoritative results to the end-users.

Although, some pages may see fluctuations in the web traffic after the algorithmic update. Some sites may gain traffic and some may witness some drop. There is nothing wrong with the websites performing less. They haven’t violated any guidelines and are not under any penalty. These changes may even cause the previously under-performing content to perform better.

The update was rolled on 24th September 2019 and as per Google, may take few days to roll out completely.

Unlike the other core algorithm rolled out by Google, the September update hasn’t witnessed any significant impact on the websites. Nevertheless, those who witnessed a drop in website traffic may want to make some changes to their approach and Google doesn’t want you to end up fixing wrong things. Hence Google has updated some fresh questionnaire webmasters should ask themselves before uploading any piece of content.

Google Questionnaire for Webmasters/Content Creators –

The ultimate aim of Google is to provide relevant and authoritative content to the user. Hence the majority of the questions involved are pertaining to content.

  • Does the content provide useful and trustworthy information to the user?
  • Does this content provide the same information as the other blogs present in the niche or it adds some additional value to the user’s knowledge?
  • Does this content provide some useful statistics to support your argument?
  • Is this sort of content a person may feel sharing it with friends/coworkers?
  • Is your headline/meta-tags descriptive?
  • Does this content avoid being unnecessarily shocking?
  • Is this sort of content people might use as a reference?
  • Does this content make the user feel that the publisher is authentic and expert in the niche?
  • Would you feel comfortable referring to the content as a source of information in the decision-making process?
  • Is the content free from grammatical and factual errors?
  • Was the content produced well or displays some hurried creation?
  • Are there too many ads on the content distracting the reader from the main content?

Besides answering these questions, you can also refer to Google’s search quality rating guidelines.

What is the Search Quality Rating Guidelines?

Google has around 10,000 search quality raters around the globe to evaluate its search results. The raters are given a set of guidelines along which they rate the search engine results.

Although Google doesn’t directly use the rater’s data to rank your web page, it is still worth following these guidelines as it refers to what Google is actually looking in a content.

Google also mentioned that changes made after this core algorithmic update may not improve or recover your search engine ranking. The algorithms simply focus on ranking the most deserving content higher in the search engines.

We hope the updates and guidelines we provide are helpful. Eventually, Google wants you to provide some useful content to its user. If you content efforts are honest and trustworthy, such core algorithmic updates will only prove beneficial for your website.