Google announced this morning on Twitter that it is releasing the September 2019 core update later today. Core updates impact how Google ranks websites and determine the most relevant web page for specific queries.
The announcement. Here is the announcement from moments ago:
What to do if you are hit. Google has given us advice on what you can do if you are negatively impacted by a core update.
Pre-announcement. This is the second time in a row that Google has pre-announced a core update. They did a pre-announcement for the June 2019 core update.
To roll out in the next few hours. Danny Sullivan from Google said he expects this to start rolling out in the next few hours and then take a few days to fully roll out.
The name. Google is now going with the month and year for the naming convention of these core updates. Google did this because of the confusion over the March core update.
Why we care. Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google does these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your website or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm. Today we know Google will be releasing a core ranking update.
Postscript. Google has confirmed that at 2pm ET this core update has begun rolling out. Here is the confirmation from Google on Twitter: