With about 3.5 billion searches being carried out daily, Google has a whopping 92.18% share in the Search Engine Market.
Undoubtedly, Google is the #1 Search Engine out there. It has gone beyond being a mere search engine and now is a transitive verb; so that doing an internet search has become equivalent to ‘Google”. The most prominent reason for that is Google always strives to provide a personalized user experience and high-quality results. Its focus is on understanding the search intent of the searcher and accordingly provide the best results. For this purpose, Google has always been self-improving to meet the expectations of its users. Every day Google updates itself. These regular updates are because Google has an ever-evolving combination of algorithms for Website Ranking. Its day to day small updates do not much affect the search results. However, once in a few months Google rolls out big updates i.e. the Google ‘Core Updates’ which bring about some varying changes.
While the Core Updates are very much positive for improving the user experience, website owners are rather fearful of the Impact Of Google Algorithm Update on their ranks. Google has always been very optimistic about its Updates. It believes Core Updates enables it to rank the deserving websites higher. While this logic is right; the websites that have been affected and lost their ranks to others are severely affected in terms of incoming traffic, sales, profit, etc. No wonder, webmasters are afraid of any Core Updates. On a positive note, Google gives you a thumbs up in advance when there is going to be a Core Update. Surely most of you who have landed on this page are equally anxious about the Core Updates by Google and hence wish to be well prepared for it in advance. Well, hold yourselves, because here we come with all the details about this Update.
On the 3rd of December 2020, Google tweeted, “Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the December 2020 Core Update.”
This tweet was dropped at 9:04 am and the rollout for the core update began at 1 pm ET. Google also stated that the rollout of the update will take about 1 to 2 weeks (as it takes normally). Usually, Google has been churning out core updates within 3 months. However, this update has been late, coming 7 months after Google’s last Core Update in May 2020. Before that, there has been an update in January 2020. This has resulted in the Google Core Update December 2020 being a rather big – one that was felt across most of the verticals. Health, education, news, law, jobs, government, health, finance, ecommerce, real estate, music were the verticals that were most impacted. The top three results within these and most of the other sectors saw greater fluctuations as compared to the May 2020 update. The travel sector seems to be comparatively less affected, and on the other hand encyclopedias and dictionaries have been seen to get higher losses.
More than that, this update coming right before the Christmas and NewYear Holidays, businesses have already created fear for the businesses. Even the SEO community is having a rigorous discussion regarding the impact of the Latest Google Update 2020. The search engine round table, the social media, the discussion forums for the SEO community, all have been filled with people talking about the increase or decrease in the traffic to their websites due to the update. Some have claimed of having 40% of their traffic, while others have had a 150% increase in the traffic.
So, the question which now arises is what do you do if your website has been negatively affected during Google Core Update December 2020? Well, Google has already stated that getting a lower rank during an update may not mean that there is something wrong with their website/webpages, but rather others are performing better. Ultimately quality content is what they should focus on and there is no such instant fix. It wants the website to create quality content having strong E-A-T i.e. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Thus, the content providing original and interesting information (not simply drawn from other sources) along with research and insightful analysis, it should be giving a substantial and comprehensive description of the topics, the topics should be equally descriptive, and more than that it should provide more value. Following these pointers, is what will help you regain your footing if you have lost your rank and consecutively the traffic. We repeat, there is no immediate steps or actions and hasty changes which is going to improve your ranking. What you need to do is work on maintaining the EAT standards of your content is what will get you through this Core Update and the others to come. So, all the best for your business websites with surviving and further improving inspite of the Core Updates.
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