What is a Google Core Update?
Simply put, Google Core Update refers to a significant change made within the ranking system. When done, the update affects a large number of sites especially indexed pages. On average, Google makes core updates once in a span of two to three months.
Experienced webpreneurs know about this and are always ready for a major Google update at least every 3 months a year. One of the major reasons for core updates is to shuffle search rankings is to ensure the user gets the latest, most relevant, and authentic search results.
While all core updates have the same aim – to provide the user with the best user experience while giving relevant and authentic answers, each core update tweaks the formula differently. In most cases, Google Core Updates ‘shock the mighty’ while they elevate the ‘little one’.
Web pages that ranked for a long time for their target keywords or key phrases may find themselves ranking low after the core update. On the other hand, web pages that for a long time ranked low on their main keywords may resurface and start to rank for those keywords after the core update.
Some of Google’s core updates that brought substantive changes in the past include:
⇢ Florida Update — November 16, 2003
⇢ Jagger Update — September, and October 2005
⇢ Big Daddy Update — March 29, 2006
⇢ Vince Update — January 18, 2009
⇢ May Day Update — April 28, 2010
⇢ Caffeine Update — June 8, 2010
⇢ Panda Update — August 12, 2011
⇢ Penguin Update — April 24, 2012
⇢ Hummingbird Update — September 26, 2013
⇢ Mobilegeddon Update — April 21, 2015
⇢ RankBrain Update — October 26, 2015
⇢ Medic Update — August 1, 2018
⇢ BERT Update — October 22, 2019
⇢ Google January 2020 Core Update — January 13, 2020
⇢ Google May 2020 Core Update — May 4, 2020
⇢ Google December 2020 Core Update — December 3, 2020
⇢ Product Review Update – April 2021
⇢ MUM Update – May 2021
⇢ Summer Broad Update – June, July 2021
⇢ Link Spam Update – July 2021
⇢ Page Experience Update – June
⇢ November Core Update – November 2021