Google tries to make substantial improvements to its ranking processes several times per year. It refers to these improvements as Core Updates. Core updates are meant to make the search results more relevant and helpful.
On 25th May 2022, Google released its May 2022 Core Update which will take around 1-2 weeks to fully roll out.
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
According to Google, this is a broad core update which means that there’s nothing in this core update that targets specific pages or sites. The May 2022 Core Update is just meant to improve Search overall and keep pace with the changing nature of the web.
However, Google has also mentioned that this update might produce some noticeable changes to how the sites perform. The sites that experience drops after this update might have done nothing wrong. These pages aren’t being penalised, they are just being reassessed against other content on the web.
This update will allow sites that were previously under-rewarded to show up on search results.
What should site owners know about the May 2022 Core Update?
Whenever there’s a core update, Google refers to the article it published in 2019. In this article, Google recommends site owners to just focus on the following things:
Focus on Content: Self-assess if you’re providing high-quality content. Ensure that the content provides an original, comprehensive and insightful description of the topic.
Focus on Presentation and Production: Ensure that your content does not have spelling or styling issues. Your content should also not have an excessive amount of ads that distract the user from the main content.
Comparison with other content: Assess where your content stands when compared to other pages in the search results.
Get to know the quality rater guidelines and E-A-T: Google’s raters try to understand if the content has a strong E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness). You should assess how your content is doing from an E-A-T perspective.
Recovery after a Core Update
Broad core updates happen every few months and according to Google, content that has been impacted by one might not recover – until the next broad core update is released.
Google also releases smaller core updates that can cause some content to recover.
Improvements made by site owners don’t guarantee recovery. However, if the updated content is more deserving then that will continue to rank well with the systems.
A great way of spotting the core updates is by looking at SERP volatility. You can keep track of it in the SERP Volatility and Google Updates Tracker.
If you have any feedback about the May 2022 Core Update, Google has a forum thread where you can provide the feedback.
