Wait, Wait! The Reflect Update is Here: Response from Google

Wait, Wait! The Reflect Update is Here: Response from Google

Google has finally opened up about the rumored February 2020 Update and stopped all the discussion by declaring NO major update was made.

• Google’s Response:

  According to the official tweets from Google’s public liaison of search “Some have asked if we had an update to Google Search last week. We did, actually several updates, just as we have several updates in any given week on a regular basis. In this thread, a reminder of when and why we give specific guidance about particular updates….”

• Danny Sullivan’s response:

  Danny Sullivan also tweeted about the latest update of Google and showed a clear difference why this is not a core update. He linked a 2019 Google’s tweet about core update to explain the difference between a daily update and a core algorithm update. He further explains that they do updates all the time, but it is not always a core update.
  Danny’s response:
  

• What is a Core Algorithm Update?

  A core algorithm update is a major event made by Google’s algorithm to bring significant changes. We can say that this is an addition to the algorithm by which Google determines what users mean when they make a query and what content of a web page mean.

But This Was a Daily Update!

Whatever rank fluctuation was felt in this week, it was nothing but the after-effect of the daily updates that happen every day, all the time. Google performs updates to its algorithm in every single day.

• Usual indicators of an Update:

  Generally, there are many discussions on social media when a major update happens. For example, when an update affects a specific niche hard, one can see an uptick in social media post clustering from that niche. However, this kind of activity was missing in this case. There was no panicked chatter about the updates.

• The no update- update:

  There is no denying the fact that people experienced some changes in the search results. But these were nothing but the part of updates that happen every day, all year long.

• What to do if your ranking got affected badly in this update:

  • Wait:

    If you lost ranking in the recent update, the best thing to do is to do nothing. All I mean is, wait! Wait for a few days to get back to your position. If you are in this industry for years, you would know it is quite common for Google to roll out a change as soon as it receives feedback, especially when it is a daily update.

  • Understand relevance:

    Remember, most updates happen on relevance. So, when you lose your ranking due to an update, instead of asking “what did I do wrong” ask “what did my competitor do right”. Your rank drops in a daily update if your competitors do something better than you. So there is nothing to fix. I mean, you don’t need to worry about low-quality links, low-quality content or anything.

So, if it is not based on quality, how does that happen?

Well, this usually happens when Google introduces an improved way to understand what users mean or what they search more.
For example, if the query is “ice cream” and your page about “how to make ice cream” dropped its rank, it could be because Google is preferring a page that shows “where to buy ice cream”. So, you can do nothing but wait. Google determines the priority pages depending on the search results.

A possible explanation of different updates:

• Daily Updates:

  It might not have any foolproof definition of daily updates. We can say that this is a combination of minor changes that result in a change appeared in the search results. It is NOT a core algorithm update.

• Google Search Console Update:

  When Google Search Console (GSC) is updated, it sends notices to publishers that their review structure data was broken and they need to be fixed.

So, what was the latest update about?

Around 9th or 10th February, Google update was related to the discover feed. It resulted in appearing webpages from offensive sites that were not included in the algorithm previously. So, this update in the discover feed might lead to less traffic to some websites.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that there is no major update by Google. So stop panicking, the sky is not falling, it is just a regular update and normal fluctuation. The cries of the core update from some quarters were a false alarm.