The Google June 2019 core update that began rolling out this past Monday is starting to be felt by SEOs, publishers, site owners, and webmasters. Let us be clear, it is incredibly early to gauge the true impact of this update. Nonetheless, we want to share some preliminary data and industry conversations surrounding this new core update.
Data Providers
So far, we have early data from SEO toolset providers including Sistrix, RankRanger, SearchMetrics, and Moz. These data providers have significant datasets around Google rankings and can sometimes observe patterns. Keep in mind, the Google index is massive, and these tool providers generally have a small snapshot of the overall index size when measuring these changes.
Sistrix. Sistrix shared data from the past day, stating “today’s data clearly shows the impact of the core update. In the daily Visibility Index of the Toolbox, you can see changes from 05.06. on 06.06.” This data is from Google’s UK index. Here is a visual representation of this change for an example site:
Sistrix published the winners thus far from this update:
They also published the losers:
Johannes Beus from Sistrix wrote, “Not only did Google pre-announce this update for the first time, but also the field of affected domains seems to be wider than in previous updates,” said Steve Paine from Sistrix. “We are seeing many YMYL websites but also classical news sites, retail, and many others. It appears this Google Core Update is broader than the last updates. Importantly, there are significant changes after just 24 hours, which means we can expect more changes as the week goes on.”
RankRanger. RankRanger sent us some data via email and posted a summary on social media. RankRanger measures the US search results, and Mordy Oberstein from RankRanger clarified that this update is still rolling out and they want to run the numbers again next week. But here is the early data from them:
“The gambling niche was hit hard as were the health and finance niches (though the update was/is impactful across the board),” Mordy Oberstein from RankRanger said. According to their data, it seems that while many sites fluctuated up/down the search results pages, they tended not to move a massive number of positions.
SearchMetrics. Marcus Tober from SearchMetrics told us he is still working on the data but noted, “my preliminary analysis is that parts of the core update from March were reverted.” He added that this was “not systematic. It seems Google changed some factors to brand/authority too much in March, and this is what was reverted. Especially in the medical space, like webmd.com or verywellhealth.com that lost, gained back their visibility.” This is something he predicted when he saw the update in March. “But in some other areas like UGC or Q&A, I’m not seeing the same pattern of a rollback,” he added.
SearchMetrics will have more data later on, and we will do another story once the dust settles with updated data.
Moz. Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz shared some early data on social media:
Seeing big gains for a few health sites yesterday, including Healthline and Verywell Health. More losses for Dr. Axe.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) June 4, 2019
No major shifts in SERP features, including Medical Panels.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) June 4, 2019
High flux across verticals, but unusually high for Health (114° vs. 70° for previous 30 days) and Food & Groceries (109° vs. 75°). Keep in mind that MozCast is split into 20 verticals, so this reduces the sample size quite a bit.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) June 4, 2019
The Community
I asked on social media what the SEO community is seeing, here are some responses:
Sadly, my site is impacted by this update. Hate it.
— Mayur Agarwal (@mayurjango) June 5, 2019
One of our clients now ranks first for all their major keywords. They are in the roadside assistance industry.
— Moe Shahzad (@shazy85) June 5, 2019
Not sure if massive coincidence… we got hit with the medic update at the same time we changed menu structure. But big recovery today.
— Rick Talbot (@rtalbot55) June 4, 2019
Maybe just a case, one of my sites (low volumes) saw a traffic increase of 30-40% in the last two days.
— Andrea Crispino (@AndyTheDonk1) June 5, 2019
A site of mine tanked from top 10 results to positions 90+ for every keyword from the March 2019 update. Then on June 3, rankings snapped back to normal. I was literally going to abandon the site. Not now 🙂
— Stephen Hockman (@StephenHockman) June 5, 2019
Core update cont’d: As an example of hourly trending, you can see this site started dropping at 4 PM on 6/3. Always interesting to see the hourly impact from a broad core update like this. More to come as I dig deeper. Stay tuned.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 5, 2019
Looks like one of my sites increased while the competitor is dropping. Mixed bag of results and a bit early to tell but it is interesting to see the flux.
— William Rock (@WilliamRock) June 5, 2019
In addition, I posted numerous quotes on my personal search blog about what the community is saying and seeing within online SEO forums and discussion groups. Many people have seen 30% changes in their traffic thus far.
What Google is Saying
But what about Google, what are they saying about this update? Of course, Google announced it:
The June 2019 Core Update is now live and rolling out to our various data centers over the coming days.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 3, 2019
Danny Sullivan from Google said this update would 100% be “noticeable.”
That’s about updates in general. The quote suggested I said that about core updates. Those are definitely noticeable. That’s why we confirm them.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 4, 2019
Gary Illyes from Google mentioned it is not done rolling out yet and can take some time to fully implement:
That’s utterly hard to estimate. Out can go anywhere between 1 day and a couple of weeks, depending on factors like data center health, network congestion, quality, etc.
— Gary “鯨理” Illyes (@methode) June 5, 2019
It’s Early
It is still very early; Google is still rolling out this update to all their data centers. But we wanted to share some early data about this update. Our advice is to remain calm, let the dust settle over the next week, and then take a deeper look at your analytics. If you were hit by this update, step back, look at your site, and evaluate whether you want to make substantial changes to the content and structure of the site.
We will have more on this topic, so stay tuned!
