The Google September 2019 core update should be just about done working out by now, and we wanted to share some early review on this latest update. We have data from several SEO tool providers, community reaction and Google’s view on this update.
What is a Google Algorithm update? A Google core update is when Google adjusts its core search ranking algorithm to return more relevant and useful search results to the searcher. Google does these updates every quarter or so, and for the past few updates, Google has confirmed them.
Rankings change. With any Google algorithm update, a core update, status update or even some user interface updates, the search results change. Some result in sites ranking higher for their prime keywords, others may see a drop in their areas, while others may see no change. Also, click-through rates may be affected by updates, and you may notice more or less traffic after any of these updates. Google made over 3,200 variances last year alone, but core search algorithm changes happen only several times per year, with big core updates happening around once a quarter.
Data on the Sept. 2019 Core Update. We have data from various SEO toolset providers. In aggregate, the data show that this September update was not as powerful or impactful as the June core update, which we had data on as well. Overall, the September core update appears to have had a greater impact on the YMYL, your money – your life, category.
RankRanger: Let’s start with RankRanger, where the organization told us: “as is typical with these core update, the Health and Finance niches took the brunt of it.”
“The volatility of raises seen at positions 1 – 3 during the June update were substantially higher than what I saw with this [September] update,” the company added.
Here is a diagram showing the volatility by sector:
Here is a graph comparing June to September core updates:
Sistrix: Next, here is Sistrix.com which announced data around this update Friday morning. The company told us its “initial impressions are that medical, media and travel domains are included (from a global perspective.)”
“In the USA there are some clear winners. As for losers, there are no important examples to share at this time,” it added. Viewing at the data, the September core update shows less of an impact compared to the June core update.
The DailyMail, which got hit strong in the June core update, saw a modest recovery, according to Sistrix:
Other winners, according to Sistrix, were biologydictionary.net, autoguide.com and additioncenter.com. Those are currently the four most prominent winners of this update according to its data.
SEMRush: Eventually, SEMRush told us, “at the moment SEMrush Sensor shows the average level of volatility for September 25, 2019, the overall level of volatility is 4.7.”
“Volatility in some categories is higher, e.g. News and Sports, but these sections are likely to have more powerful changes throughout the day,” the company added. The company told it did not see a great pattern for winners and losers with this update.
Here is the volatilization broken down by category or section, notice news, sports and arts/entertainment were the most impacted. But that isn’t uncommon, as SEMRush said above:
The biggest winners, according to SEMRush, were the DailyMail, eBackPage.com, lasd.org and marionschool.net. The losers were TheFourMusic.com, Monks.org, BraidingClub.com, PascoLibraries.org and RoyalCaribbean.com.au.
The community. The SEO community has been very active watching and responding to this update, like all updates. Here are some comments from the community, including what I covered on my blog.
Google advice. Google was reluctant to give any input in the past around core updates. Google has said there is empty to fix with these updates. But last month Google finally gave the community information around core updates – you can read that here.
It is still early. The rollout may be ending up very soon, but this is all early data and things may still change over the next couple of days. So far, it seems this update was not as big as the previous update. So keep an eye on your traffic, keep making your web site better, and keep going on driving traffic and conversions on your site.
