Google Core Update, How Has it affected your sites?

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Just over a week ago Google once again updated its algorithm. However, this time it was massive which means it had a lot of impact on specific types of sites.

If you haven't been checking outsides now is the time to look at your Google analytics or if you have a Jaaxy Pro account then track your keywords.

Not surprisingly it seems to be that the travel industry suffered the most.

In fact, it's difficult to tell which industries are affected by the Covid 19 virus social distancing or lockdown which have been affected by the Google core update.

If you look at the image below it makes sense that the travel industry has taken the biggest whack on the grounds that nobody is really traveling at the moment.

I put my house on the market the day before lockdown. Despite the for sale sign outside no one has been to see it. I have no doubt that if I looked into it there are limitations on whether people can move anyway.


And as you can see food and drink has taken a hit as well. Not surprisingly as many restaurants had to shut. Different areas will have different policies. Some areas are open for take away only and some are closed.

It would make sense that people would have a tendency to have a take away delivered quite close to home because in some areas you can't drive.

All of this makes it difficult to see whether these really are the core update or whether they are the current pandemic.

For instance, beauty and fitness hasn't really taken a hit or rather is in the middle of the table. Interestingly enough in the Great Depression the one industry that wasn't hurt was the beauty industry. Fitness gyms are closed so it's difficult for them to do business.

On the other hand the bottom of the table the home garden websites haven't been affected all that badly, even though many of them have been closed.

I maintain a lot of sites for clients once I have noticed is this. Clients that update that content frequently have been less affected.

I don't mean rewrite a couple of paragraphs. I mean those that ruthlessly update their website by deleting old and irrelevant content and updating information as though it was written yesterday.

My team does run a service to update website content. These are the things that they do.

They check for broken links on a daily basis. You can do this using a plugin .

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/

Some of my sites and client sites are over 10 years old. They had at least one info graphic a week. There were no infographics 10 years ago. Also infographics to become outdated themselves and they do need updating.

Some information is so outdated that it just has to be binned. I noticed a few weeks ago review post on one of my sites which is reviewing a product which is far as I know as needed be manufactured since about 2010! That got a quick delete.

When you actually delete content using 301 redirect to send them to other relevant content.

My client sites I also get to check the relevancy of the keywords they ranking for. Sometimes they change in a niche. It's quite easy to find this out I just google it. I am often surprised how often I miss a keyword and I find this out by looking at the meta-tags of new articles.

Whilst I'm carrying out this search I also about once a month check how the sites competitors have updated their sites and just make sure I'm not missing anything.

Maybe it's time to consider updating some of your old sites even if you haven't been affected.

How has your sites been affected in the last few weeks?

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Recent Comments

14

Great information for a newbie like me.
Thank you
Lisa

Thank you very much Catherine for all the information. I make a query. What is the plugin to use to know the broken links?.
Claudio

Many thanks Catherine!

Thanks Catherine, useful and informative as always.

Thank you for sharing

Thanks for the heads up!

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