Google announced the rollout of its August 2024 core update today, which is expected to take about a month for full implementation.
This update is significant because it incorporates feedback received after the September 2023 helpful content update, which negatively impacted many small and independent publishers.
What Google is Saying
John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, stated:
- "Today, we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search."
Google aims with this update to elevate useful content from small and independent publishers. Mueller also noted:
- "This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high-quality sites, including ‘small’ or ‘independent’ sites that are creating useful, original content on relevant searches. This is an area we’ll continue to address in future updates."
The August 2024 core update aims to better capture improvements made by sites, ensuring that the best content on the web is surfaced, Mueller added.
Guidance Updated
Google has updated its help page about core updates, providing more in-depth guidance for those who might see changes in their rankings.
More Details
Publishers were anticipating a core update after expressing concerns about search ranking volatility. Recently, there has been significant fluctuation in Google search rankings, but until now, there has been no confirmation of a core update.
What to Do if You’re Affected
Google has previously advised on actions to take if impacted by a core update:
- No specific steps guarantee recovery. A negative ranking impact does not necessarily indicate an issue with your pages.
- Consider the list of questions Google provides if your site is hit by a core update.
- Recovery might be possible between core updates, but the most significant changes usually occur following another core update.
In summary, focus on creating helpful content for users rather than optimizing solely for search engines. Google reiterated:
- "There’s nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking as well, we strongly encourage reading our help page on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content."
Previous Core Updates
Here’s a timeline of recent core updates:
- March 2024 Core Update: Started March 5, completed April 19.
- November 2023 Core Update: Started November 2, ended November 28.
- October 2023 Core Update: Started October 5, ended October 19.
- August 2023 Core Update: Started August 22, ended September 7.
- March 2023 Core Update: Started March 15, ended March 28.
Other Updates
Between the last core update and the current one, there was a spam update, the June 2024 spam update, which started on June 20 and finished on June 27.
Why We Care
Many sites impacted by prior updates, especially the September 2023 helpful content update, did not recover with the March 2024 core update. These sites are closely watching the August 2024 core update, with the hope of seeing improvements over the next few weeks.
