With a start to ending of the decade, 2019 has seen some of the major and interesting Google algorithm updates. Known for its long history of famous algorithm updates, search index changes and refreshes, Google has to handle a lot of data and provide the most relevant result for the searches. To achieve this, Google generally releases multiple algorithm updates each year.
This year, Google released several core updates and a new BERT algorithm. These updates had a major impact on some of the niches. Let’s take a look at some of the major algorithm updates in 2019 and how it affected online searches.
March 2019 Core Update
This is one of the first major core algorithm updates at the start of the year. Generally, Google releases many unnamed updates but it named this update as “March 2019 core update”. Released on 12th March, this follows Google’s new naming convention which conveys which type of update it was and when was it released to reduce confusion.
- Medic Update Reversal
This update was observed as a reversal to August 2018 Medic update. This implies the update has affected Health niche. The medic update affected the websites in Health and Wellness niche. Websites who adhered to E-A-T (Expertise-Authoritativeness-Expertise) guidelines were relatively safe from the update and rewarded by Google. With this update, Google has reversed medic update and thus websites previously affected, saw a positive impact.
- Negative Impact on Niche Pages
Pages providing information for a single or limited subject matter were badly hit by this algorithm. To better the searches, Google has focused on user signals and the intent. To put it simply, websites with more time on site, higher pages view per visit and low bounce rate have seen a positive impact.
Looking at this update’s effects and implications, creating high-quality content not just for niche keywords but for general topics would be a good way to make your site stand against such updates. Collectively, maintaining a good E-A-T score will pave a smooth path ahead.
June 2019 Core Update
For the first time in history, Google announced the roll-out of a major core algorithm update in advance. It was a global core algorithm update that took five days to roll-out. In general, site admins reported to have had a negative impact in the aftermath, but the severely affected was the news sites.
- Impact on News sites
Though impacting a particular niche, it has hit the news website rather hard. Hugely affected, Daily Mail and CCN.com saw a steep decline in the website visitors. This, in turn, has affected their ad revenue. Post the update, daily Mail lost 50% of their traffic with a percentage much higher for CCN.com to be around 70%.
- Video carousals
In the aftermath of this update, we can see an increase in video carousel on the SERP. With this update, Google not only improved the way it evaluates websites based on the content but also the SERP layout. In just one week, Youtube saw an increase in visibility by 25%.
Though Google says there is nothing to fix, webmasters should undertake some measures to recover from the lost traffic and further improve content based on the relevancy and intent to stay safe from future core updates.
September 2019 Core Update
As the third major core algorithm update in 2019, released on 24th September 2019 had some major effect on the websites. The site affected had seen a drop of 20% in their traffic. From the lack of specific guidance from Google, webmasters were open to experimenting to figure out which websites were affected.
- Since there was no effect for the top-ranking keywords, the update targeted long tail keywords for better intent and content. It appears that Google is trying to match keywords closely with the user-intent.
- It also seems to have affected health care and finance websites. Though this effect is similar to the March and June core updates, webmasters say that its impact is different. For some searches, results included websites with high link profile whereas for some keywords the resulting websites had superior quality content but low link profile.
The best thing to deal with such updates is to improvise on the keyword strategy and produce relevant and high-quality content that builds trust.
BERT Algorithm Update
- What is BERT?
Another major algorithm update rolled out by Google is BERT. BERT interprets the meaning of words in the context of the search query. Technically, BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from transformers) is an artificially intelligent deep learning algorithm that relates to Natural Language Processing (NLP).
- How it works?
BERT uses pattern recognition to interpret queries in a conversational way. Thus it helps to produce more relevant results for the searches. These changes are pointing to the fact that this update targets long-tail keyword to make them more intent-driven.
Google created BERT to fine-tune its algorithm. Unlike other updates, BERT does not target a certain niche or industry. To optimize for BERT, the main focus should be given to creating more relevant and useful content. Also, the content should be updated with time and more frequently. The website that got affected by this update has not much to lose because the traffic was irrelevant and they did not benefit much from the traffic.