Google Core Update, June 2019. What Happened?
Google has released it's latest update, the Google Broad Core Algorithm update for June 2019. It appears that Google has just rolled this out as of June 3rd (at around 10am) and I have noticed both positive and negative results amongst members.
One thing you don't want to do is panic if you see negative results immediately after these algorithm updates. These typically hit websites at different times, meaning that your website may see an increase or drop before others, thus skewing the results initially. It often times takes weeks before the dust settles from a significant algorithm update.
Based on what I have seen, it appears that Google is continuing to reward "pillar" style content. Content that is thorough is continuing to become the benchmark for SEO success. You don't see much content under 1,000 words ranking on the 1st page any longer, and for more competitive terms 2,000-5,000 words is becoming normal.
That doesn't mean that you need to be verbose with all your content, some of your posts may be 1,000, some may be 1,500 words, some 2,000, some much more. It will depend on the actual article.
So keep doing what you are doing. Keep creating high quality content. Keep working on getting engagement. And continue focusing on low competition keywords, ideally under the 100 QSR threshold. You will continue to see results and continue to climb the ranks with every update.
Have you noticed any changes in the last day or two with your rankings? If so, I would love to hear your feedback as to what you are seeing in terms of your rankings and your overall website traffic. Leave your insights below.
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oh yes I did notice that some of my top performing articles went lower in ranking, so I got scared if I was doing something wrong and started checking everything.
Thanks for this post. Good to know Google did changes to the algorithm.
Yeah, definitely some updates going on. We will see where things settle in the coming days. Either way, no need to panic when algorithm updates like this roll out.
Slight dent in the traffic for my primary money site; something on the order of 10%.
Not worried about it; my traffic took a 50% hit from the July 2018 algo update and my site, with no changes, eventually recovered from that and ended up getting even more traffic than ever about 8 months later.
I wasn't even aware of a new update this time. I thought the drop in traffic was just due to the summertime slowdown that I encounter annually.
Yeah, that is the case with the March update. Many people saw a traffic decline in the winter, and then it started to go up and then with the March Google Core update, they saw their rankings start to really climb.
We won't let us discourage from that obstacle! Just wrote this today: Your online business: Turning stones into milestones
this is interesting, Yesterday after that time, I created a review post and it was the quickest I have ever seen in, not only getting indexed but I instantly go on page 23 of Google and then later on that day climbed to page 2. This same post is still climbing in the ranks. The post lenght was a little under 2000 words.
Excellent, that is certainly a good sign. One thing that I have been noticing is that 2,000+ word content is really starting to gain more and more traction in Google, not just under the ultra competitive terms anymore.
That's awesome, I usually try and at least shoot for over 1500 words. Now i will set my goal within site content to 2000 per article. Plus be as thorough as possible.
Unfortunately, I have seen a drop in traffic. Well since my website is only getting about 50-70 people a day, today is the first day I have seen the drop so, it is hard to determine whether it was an update or just normal fluctuation, but I feel like it went down for about 30%. However, some of the big dogs in my niche dropped from like 170k to 130k according to Semrush.
To be fair, it is nice to see because they don't work their a** hard and they don't even have a single informational post apart from about 50 commercial articles (long articles tho) like best of, and reviews. They have just paid for a lot of high DA backlinks.
I am just hoping that with all the helpful content going on my website I will get those big keywords and hopefully overtake them at some point and rankings and traffic come back in the next few days.
Yeah, hard to tell and I definitely wouldn't panic here. Things will settle down here in the next few days and analyze and assess things then. I think if you have retained high quality, you are going to always prevail. That has been the case with every update in my distant memory, going back to the Google animal updates.
The broad core updates are no different. Google is after the best content...the most engaging content, that is being run by websites where people actually get back to their users. They also like speed, and mobile. If you have all those attributes you are going to have a bright future ahead in the SEO world.
I've seen a definite hit and a number of others I've spoken to and researched have seem almost exactly similar declines (in the 20-30% range). I charted my traffic to get a visual representation, included below.
If the core update stays unchanged, I'll have lost about 3 months of growth. It's not the end of the world, but it is disheartening. For now, I plan to ignore my stats until things settle down. Letting the stress affect my work will only hinder things further.
Follow Kyle's advice. Stick to creating great content. This will only be a minor setback in the grand scheme of things.
Hey Steve,
Just out of curiosity did you notice any trends in which posts lost rankings? Like word count, reviews, or anything like that?
There's no visible trend that I can see. The majority of my posts saw massive declines, while others got small bumps. Both mobile and desktop were affected equally. Nothing to make sense of at this time.
I saw a 20% drop yesterday for my make money/finance site. And my shopping site saw a 10% drop as well. But I've gone through this last december. And then in March Google fixed whatever they had messed up. Hopefully it doesn't take as long.
But we're probably going to see this shuffle happen for another week or so. I think as long as everyone has followed what WA teaches and basically mirrors what Google wants, we should all be fine in the long run.
But in the short term folks shouldn't have knee jerk reactions. I may avoid looking at my stats for a week or so just for my nerves. lol
Are you saying that I should put down the gas can and pack of matches?
Unrelated: can you collect insurance money on a website that accidentally burnt down?
Yeah, it appears they are rolling these broad core updates out every 3 months or so now. This is the whiplash effect I believe here and folks creating high quality content are going to see a bounce back in the next few days here.
Wait and see, definitely not a time for panic and it is those that knee jerk react to things like this that typically end up messing up their SEO.
Noticed a small rise in my traffic over the last few days.
Not much, and not sure if it's due to the core update or just progress but I certainly have not seen a drop.
I normally get a boost from updates, probably as "gamed" sites fall away.
So fingers crossed this is another little boost for me!
Yeah, a boost from Google updates is usually a typical thing if you are focusing on white hat stuff (content, engagement, load speeds, etc).
I have seen some folks with great content getting beat up a little, whereas others have benefited from this. This update is still being rolled out across Google's Data centres so it is not done yet.
Onwards and upwards.
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My traffic dropped by about half, but from May 30 - June 3. It started coming back up Jun 4. I don't know if it was related, or Google just being Google.
- Christina
Strange, it could be related here. Good to hear your traffic is bouncing back here for you. :)