The Third Core Update This Year

Three this year

Google says a broad core update begins rolling out today, named the September 2019 core update. It is the third this year, after one in March and another at the start of June.

Each has been described the same way: a broad change in how Google assesses pages, not aimed at any kind of site, with nothing specific to fix.

The routine for a single update is familiar by now. Note the date, change nothing while it rolls out, and compare page by page afterwards.

What deserves attention this time is the pattern. Three in a little over six months says something about how search now works.

What the pattern says

• Assessment is continuous, not a set of rules learnt once.
• Positions are provisional, however long they have held.
• The next review is only months away.
• Recovery often waits for the next broad update.
• Tactics that worked can stop working without notice.

The fourth matters most to anybody who lost ground in March or June. Google has said that pages affected by one update may not recover, even after improvements, until the next broad update.

So today is a review date for that work, as well as a new risk.

Built for people, or around tactics

A site built around tactics is shaped by what somebody believed would rank: near-identical pages for every suburb, articles written to a keyword count, headings stuffed with phrases, links bought or swapped.

A site built for people is shaped by what customers ask: what you do, where, for how much, how long it takes, who does it, what others say about it, and how to reach you.

At a glance the two can look alike. Over a run of reassessments they behave differently, because each update is another attempt to measure usefulness rather than the presence of particular words.

Why tactics wear out

A tactic works because it imitates something Google values. Many similar pages imitate breadth, repeated keywords imitate relevance, bought links imitate reputation.

Each update is Google trying to reward relevant, trustworthy pages a little more accurately, which in practice means telling the imitation from the real thing.

A tactic that survived one update can fail at the next, in a way no single change explains.

That is why a site built on tactics is exposed to every update, while one built for people has less to fear from a better measurement.

What Google has asked owners to consider

In August, Google published guidance on core updates, with questions site owners can ask of their own pages.

Whether a page offers original information rather than repeating others. Whether it covers its subject completely. Whether it shows who wrote it and why they can be trusted, and is free of easily checked errors.

Whether it displays well on a phone and is not crowded with ads. And whether it adds something the other results for the same search do not.

None of those can be met with a tactic. They describe a page written by somebody who knows the subject, for somebody who needs it.

A worked example

A junk removal company with two trucks, serving Prince George and the towns around it, had a site built four years ago around location pages.

Every town and neighbourhood had one, each with the same three paragraphs and the place name swapped in.

Those pages lost ground in March and again in June.

A competitor of similar size, with one service area page, a price guide by truckload, a page on what it could not take and photographs of real jobs, moved very little.

Thirty near-identical pages told Google, and visitors, nothing the first had not. The competitor's pages each answered a question customers actually asked.

Over the summer the company merged its location pages into one area page naming every town it serves.

Then it wrote the pages its callers kept asking about: prices by load, items it cannot take, same-day pickups, and where things go afterwards.

Today's update will show whether that is enough this time. Either way, the site now answers the questions its customers ask, which was the work worth doing.

What holds up

Pages that answer real questions specifically: the price range, the area, the process, the exceptions.

Evidence that a real business stands behind them: names, photographs of real work, an address, reviews you did not write. And pages kept current, so hours, prices, staff and services match the business as it is today.

A site that works well on a phone, loads reasonably quickly and does not bury its content under pop-ups. None of this is new; it is what Google's guidance keeps describing.

This week's routine

The usual steps still apply. Add an annotation in Analytics for today, and hold content changes until the rollout settles over the next week or two.

Then compare clicks by page in Search Console against an equal period before, matching days of the week, with searches for your own name filtered out.

A page that dropped deserves a slow, honest reading beside the pages now above it.

Improving between updates

With updates arriving every few months, the useful rhythm is steady improvement between them rather than a rush after each one. A quarterly look at the pages that bring work, with a short list for each, fits that rhythm.

It also keeps comparisons clean. Changes made in the quiet months have settled by the time the next update arrives, so the two never land in the same week.

The counter-case

Some useful sites still lose ground, because other pages are judged more useful for the same searches. That is not a fault to fix, and Google says improvements are no guarantee of recovery.

Some tactics are also simply good practice: clear titles, sensible headings, descriptive links. The problem is tactics that replace usefulness, not care in presenting it.

And a site with little search traffic will see swings that are mostly chance.

Build pages around what customers ask, keep them current, and let each update measure that.

Between now and the next one

1. Annotate today's date in Analytics.
2. Hold content changes until the rollout settles.
3. Compare pages, not totals, in two weeks.
4. List the questions customers ask on the phone.
5. Check each page answers one of them specifically.
6. Merge or remove pages written only for search.
7. Schedule improvements for the quiet months.

Step four is the one that turns an update into a plan. The questions customers ask on the phone are the clearest description there is of what a useful page in your business looks like.

The routine for the first two weeks is covered in Google announced this update in advance.

Frequently asked questions

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