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Search Engine Land » Google » Google: SEO » Google: ‘We do updates all the time’ — somewhat confirming February update rumors

Google: ‘We do updates all the time’ — somewhat confirming February update rumors

There was an update, in fact, multiple updates, but that is normal Google said.

Barry Schwartz on February 13, 2020 at 11:02 am

Earlier this week, we reported on an unconfirmed Google February search algorithm update. In response to questions about an update, Google’s Danny Sullivan said on Twitter Thursday morning, “We do updates all the time.” He then referred to the company’s advice given around the November update, which Google has described as “several updates.”

Google’s response. Sullivan responded to several questions around the rumors of a February update on Twitter early Thursday morning. Here is one of the responses, but they were all the same:

We do updates all the time. I would suggest rereading our general advice about this: https://t.co/aL4QObvvhH

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) February 13, 2020

Was there an update? Well, yea, Google said, “we do updates all the time.” But this was not classified as a “broad core update.” Google generally now pre-announces those core updates. But that does not mean Google didn’t release an update (or updates) last weekend that impacted core rankings in some way. The data from the tool providers and the SEO community reflect big fluctuations in rankings from about February 7, 2020 to February 12, 2020. We illustrated and summarized a lot of that in our original story.

Google’s previous statements. Here are the previous statements Google made about that November update:

Sometimes, a particular update might be broadly noticeable. We share about those when we feel there is actionable guidance for content owners. For example, when our Speed Update happened, we gave months of advanced notice and advice….https://t.co/Nwi8I9rooP

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 12, 2019

Again, we have updates that happen all the time in Google Search. If we don’t share about them, there is no particular actionable guidance to follow nor changes to make other than to keep focused on great content as we’ve advised generally such as here: https://t.co/e5ZQUA3RC6

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 12, 2019

Nothing actionable and nothing to fix. So with these updates this week, Google is again saying there is nothing actionable you can do or fixes you can make to adjust things. Which has me a bit concerned about the 25% decline TechTarget experienced with the November update. The company told us it is making technical changes to try to address them, but will it matter?

What was this update? This is the big question. It lasted longer than most other unconfirmed updates. In fact, in some cases, it looks like Google may have pushed out an update or a few updates Friday night and then maybe reversed it a few days later. Of course, I do not know for sure, it is just a guess. But I’ve seen several charts of specific sites hit that seem to have recovered. Here is one:

To those asking about the site that was dropping/recovering by 60% starting on ~2/7, here is BOTH the GSC data and @SEMrush data. Notice how they line up almost perfectly (trending-wise). So for this site, whatever Google pushed on 2/7, they rolled back. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/2YlliGnk4K

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 13, 2020
You can see a drop in traffic the 7th and then an increase on the 12th.

There was an update. So yes, there was an update of some sort, but again, we have nothing actionable to give you from Google. For now, you just know that if you saw a lot of ranking shifts this past week, you were not alone.

Why we care. Sometimes with Google updates, Google may give us some advice or areas to look at. Other-times, Google will tell us there is no advice, just go make your site better. In any event, it is also good to know that there was a larger update that impacted a lot of other sites and maybe there is nothing you specifically did to cause your rankings to go up or down in the Google organic search results.


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About The Author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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