When a Google update strikes, it can wreak havoc on your website, dramatically lowering your traffic with seemingly no explanation. Kristine Schachinger helps businesses recover when their sites are affected by these updates, working with big-name companies like Zappos, Instacart, and Discover. At Affiliate Summit West 2024, Kristine explained what Google algorithm updates are, how they can affect your site, and what you can do to minimize their impact.
6 Recent Google Algorithm Updates
Since the fall of 2023, Google has implemented six especially important updates:
- 3 core updates
- 1 HCU update
- 1 Spam update
- 1 Reviews update
These Google updates addressed spam and quality algorithms, which evaluate things like page speed and layout to filter out low-quality sites.
Understanding Core Updates
Core updates are often the most concerning because they can have a profound effect on your website traffic. As a result, it’s vital for businesses to know what these updates do and what consequences they might have.
What Core Updates Are and Aren’t About
During her presentation, Kristine dispels some misunderstandings about core updates. She explains that they aren’t related to these common digital marketing concerns:
- Accuracy of content
- Authorship
- Author credentials
- Bios
- Linking out
- Links to certifications
- Known brands
- Reviews
- The tone of your content
- Schema
Instead, she says that core updates are about the quality ranking signals on your site, including backlinks and site architecture. She recommends looking at Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, not to inform your website design, but rather to understand what Google considers a good site.
How Core Updates Affect Your Site
Google’s core updates are severe and can lead to significant decreases or increases in your valuation. If Google decides your content is low-quality based on a core update, it can take away the vast majority of your traffic and suppress your site for two to four years. Kristine says that “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) sites are especially vulnerable, including those that deal with news and current events, finance, and health.
How to Recover After a Core Update Hits Your Site
Site recovery isn’t easy, but there are steps you can do to lessen the effect on your traffic. Nothing else matters if Google can’t crawl and index your pages, so start by looking for technical issues, such as:
- Using improper anchor text for internal links.
- Poor site architecture that lacks structure and flow.
- Low page speeds.
Kristine also suggests examining query issues with relevance, user intent, and shifting because core updates often happen at the query level. In addition, analyze your overall site quality, including usability, content quality, and inbound links, which occasionally cause problems with core updates.
Content Updates and Ranking Signals
The Helpful Content Update, which rolled out in 2023, is actually a continuously running ranking signal based on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). If Google finds that you have content that they don’t consider helpful, they’ll lower your traffic sitewide, with the severity differing based on the quality of content on other pages. Businesses that are hit by a content update usually don’t recover for at least two to three months.
The Risk of Using AI Content
Google has an algorithm that identifies content that is likely AI-generated, and it uses this when determining whether your content is valuable. Specifically, AI creates problems with these aspects of Google’s content valuation:
- Whether it was made for humans.
- If you’re using extensive automation to produce it.
- If it’s summarizing what others have said without adding new value.
- If it’s original and has depth and breadth.
By nature, large language models (LLMs) can’t produce content that’s in-depth or contributes new value. As a result, Kristine recommends using AI for ideation for outreach or emails but sticking to human-generated content for your website. If you use AI, ensure it’s only in small blocks and that there’s a heavy human element involved.
How Google Uses Machine Learning
Google applies machine learning to its organic search engine for pre-scoring, ad hoc post-scoring, and live ranking factors, such as the Helpful Content Update. However, Kristine advises against trying to optimize for machine learning. Instead, she suggests that you feed it the right signals and interpreters by:
- Writing holistic content with depth and breadth
- Using semantically related terms
- Structuring your data
- Using schema
- Writing well-formed text and questions
- Avoiding AI-generated content
- Using videos and images your company recorded, not AI-generated or stock images
- Incorporating personal experiences
Taking these steps will make it easier for Google to understand your site and could improve your search rankings.
Navigating Google Algorithm Updates
Kristine describes Google updates as “boringly simple yet complex.” Although the problems are often glaring, many businesses struggle to identify where they’ve gone wrong and how to bounce back after an update hits. Her presentation includes detailed information about multiple updates and their effects, so you can pinpoint your technical and content issues and recover as quickly as possible.
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