MAY 2022 BROAD CORE ALGORITHM UPDATE

Today, we're releasing a broad core update, as we do several times per year. This update is called the May 2022 core update. Learn more: https://t.co/7kFklwdkAb

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) May 25, 2022

Google just confirmed today that they launched a Broad Core Algorithm Update, appropriately named the “May 2022 core update” 

We have been seeing rumblings throughout the SEO community hinting at a possible upcoming Core update as rankings have been fluctuating irregularly for the past couple weeks. 

A Broad Core Update indicates a large, sweeping change that affects how Google views and ranks websites as a whole. This affects nearly all websites, and we tend to see big ranking shifts during the 1-2 volatile weeks after a Core Update is announced. 

Google typically releases one of these Broad Core updates a few times a year, and this is the advice they give for site owners:

“We confirm broad core updates because they typically produce some widely notable effects. Some sites may note drops or gains during them. We know those with sites that experience drops will be looking for a fix, and we want to ensure they don’t try to fix the wrong things. Moreover, there might not be anything to fix at all.

There’s nothing wrong with pages that may perform less well in a core update. They haven’t violated our webmaster guidelines nor been subjected to a manual or algorithmic action, as can happen to pages that do violate those guidelines. In fact, there’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites. Instead, the changes are about improving how our systems assess content overall. These changes may cause some pages that were previously under-rewarded to do better.”

-Official Google Documentation of What Site Owners Should Know About Google’s Core Updates: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates 

In a nutshell, you may notice some ranking fluctuations, but that DOESN’T mean anything is wrong. The standard advice that Google gives is not go changing a bunch of things on your site until the dust settles, because if your site has strong content and solid SEO, there’s no reason to change anything. 

Here at Wit, we are monitoring your website to ensure that any ranking dips are temporary, and keeping an eye on the Core Update as it unfolds.

Google doesn’t officially go on record saying what the Core Update is going to affect, but there are typically some pretty clear patterns that emerge a few days/weeks after the Core Update. The last big Core Update we had was the November “Vicinity” Update  which shrank down the size of the Map Pack and wreaked havoc on some local & service based businesses. The most damaging of these have thankfully been reversed. 

We will keep you updated as we learn more details about this Core Update!