Okay, welcome back. This is John Locke and today is December 3rd, 2020. The Google Search
Liaison said, “Later today we're releasing a Broad Core algorithm update
as we do several times per year. It's called the December 2020 Core Update. Our guidance about such
updates remains as we've covered before. Please see this blog post for more about that.” Okay,
so this is their quarterly updates. Okay, so let's refresh our memory about this. They first posted
this back in 2019. “Every day, Google releases one or more changes designed to improve our
search results. Most are not noticeable but help us incrementally continue to improve.
Sometimes an update may be more noticeable. We aim to confirm such
updates when we feel there is actionable information that webmasters, content producers,
and others might take in relation to them." "For example, when our ‘Speed Update’ happened,
we gave months of advanced notice and advice. Several times a year, we make significant,
broad changes to our search algorithms and systems, and we refer to these as ‘core updates’.
They're designed to ensure that overall, we're delivering on our mission to present relevant
and authoritative content to searchers. These core updates may also affect Google Discover.
We confirm broad core updates because they typically produce widely notable effects.
Some sites may note drops or gains during these updates, and we know that those sites
that experience drops will be looking for a fix. We want to ensure they don't try and fix
the wrong things. Moreover, there might not be anything to fix at all.
There's nothing wrong with pages that may perform less well in a core update. They have not violated
any webmaster guidelines or have been subjected to a manual or algorithm action, aka a penalty."
In other words, you're not penalized.
“It can happen to pages that do violate those guidelines, but there's nothing in a core
update that targets specific pages or sites. The changes are about improving how our systems assess
content overall, and they may cause some pages that were previously under-rewarded to do better.”
Now, what they're talking about here, they're talking about the machine learning
doing better, figuring out what people want to see when they type in a search query.
If you experience a drop, you're not being penalized. They're just pushing something
else that maybe is a better fit. Pages that drop don't have anything wrong to fix. Okay? You still
may feel like you need to do something. Focus on ensuring you're offering the best content you can.
That's what our algorithms seek to reward. Some of the things that they talk about in
assessing content are: are you providing original information, reporting research or analysis?
Does content provide substantial, complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does it provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Does it draw on other sources? Does it avoid simply copying or rewriting their sources?
And instead, providing substantial additional value and originality. Does the headline or the
page title provide a descriptive helpful summary of the content? These things are still important.
Does it avoid being exaggerated or shocking in nature? Referencing the headline–so not
click bait. is this the sort of page you'd want to bookmark or share with a friend or recommend? So,
those things are still important. would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed
magazine encyclopedia or book? Now, obviously they cannot track printed magazines, but online
versions of magazines or news sites or other authoritative blogs might reference that content.
Notice, links are still important. So the big thing is looking at this is
you must have something original, substantial, um, original research,
something that that states stuff that's beyond the obvious, original insight, okay, um, expertise
questions. Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it,
such as clear sourcing, linking to sources, evidence of expertise involved, background
about the author or site that publishes it? So, links to an author page or about page.
If you research the site producing the content, would you come away with an impression that's
well-trusted or widely recognized as an authority? Is this content written by an expert or enthusiast
who demonstrably knows the topic well? Is the content free from easily verified factual errors?
Would you feel comfortable trusting this content for issues relating to
Your Money or Your Life. Now, onto other things. Is it free from spelling or stylistic issues?
Was the content produced well? Does it appear sloppily or hastily produced? Is it mass-produced
or outsourced to a large number of creators? Or spread across a large network of sites,
so the individual pages or sites don't get as much attention or care? Does the content have an
excessive amount of ads that distract or interfere with the main content? And does it display well
on mobile devices? Does your content provide substantial value when compared to other pages
in search results? So, is your page far and away, heads above the other competitors
that are also producing similar content? Is it arguably better than your competitor's content?
And does the content seem to be serving the genuine interests of visitors to the site or
does it seem to exist solely by someone attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
So, if you have a word salad or if your keyword stuffing excessively, you know,
then you might suffer. Okay? And then the quality rater guidelines and eat talks about this at the
end, links to some sources. You should improve the content. So, the thing is, every time they do
this court update, it's basically just trying to improve what they already have in place. They do
this every quarter. They do minor updates daily, but these ones are ones that they announce. They
take all the changes that they've been experimenting with the machine learning,
trying to replicate what a human being would choose, and then they push it out in these
quarterly updates. Okay? This one just happens to be dropping a few weeks before Christmas. Now,
I want to show you what a couple of other people are saying about this particular update.
Like I said, if you focus on creating good content, getting links, having good
design--and then once you've done that, also focus on having a fast-loading site
that loads well on mobile, doesn't have ads,
is well-written--then you stand a very good chance of ranking well. Links in authority,
you know, showing who is writing a particular article, if it's the author or the site,
you know, who's behind the content. But having content that's good and is arguably better than
other people's content, and this is mostly talking about blog content, but you could apply this to,
you know, other things as well. It could also very much apply to e-commerce
sites, for example. Okay? So here's what this person said,
Jeffrey Coyle said, and I think he--I don't know if this is like a forecaster or what, but he said,
“I think that this is already rolling out in Europe” and stuff like that tonight, but
he said he's also seeing “sites that took previous beatings because of low-quality components
continue their trek to the bottom. Expertise or die.” So, low-quality components like poor content
or poor design or just all the elements of the site are not up to being as good as they can be.
Okay, so this person, Patrick Stox said, “Some folks have worked hard on their sites and I'm sure
some will recover. For too many, it's likely just a slow grind
downward though.” So, you really must try and have the best content, the best design,
get links from authoritative sites and continue to build your brand. As we've talked about before,
since 2008, Google has said that they want to reward big brands when it comes to ranking. That's
how they can sort out the cesspool from the good stuff, and that's what they said back in 2008.
The last 12 years to 13 years have all been moving toward that goal. Okay? But machine learning
and their understanding of what's on the page through the Natural Language API,
they can, they're a much better judge of what is content that people would like to see. And also,
they're using user signals to kind of be the final arbitrary is good content. So, this is really hard
to fake nowadays, and you cannot gimmick the system. You must create something that is good.
Lily Ray says, “It is still very early, but if this turns out to be the result of today's core
update, will mean it began kicking in for this site at December 3rd at midnight. (Shown below:
hourly organic search traffic compared to the same period week before Thanksgiving.)
Not mad about the results.” But something's happening here where it was very similar, but then
there’s a big spike, and then a drop-off. Okay? Maybe this is like the last day,
that's what it is. This is the day that we're on and this is when we cease having information. But
it took a big spike up here, hour by hour. Interesting.
Somebody, you know, Barry Schwartz, aka RustyBrick said here that it might be from a December first
google search ranking algorithm update, maybe the heat, some of these sites they kind of
track like daily like if there's a bunch of fluctuation in some of the top sites,
but they said, “I figured it felt too soon, but it's also a strange anomaly for it to have
started surging like that at midnight. We'll keep digging in.” So, obviously this is rolling out,
I've checked all my sites and it's still early on December 3rd, but I haven't really seen any
movement one way or the other. All my sites that we're doing good,
they're still doing good. All my clients that we're doing good, still doing good. Nobody's
lost anything, haven't seen any new competitors like getting pushed yet. I'll keep an eye on this,
maybe in the next few days something will happen, but I haven't really seen anything happen,
you know, for my clients yet. Okay? So, but that's happening, this update is coming out.
All right, my name is John Locke, my business is “Lockedown SEO” and as you can see,
we make new videos three times a week. We're almost at a thousand subscribers, let's get to
that goal! I would love to, but I would love to see you subscribe because we have so many videos,
it's quite a few, almost 800 videos. We're getting pretty near there, but you can leave a comment on
any of these videos if you have a question and I will be more than happy to answer in an upcoming
video. I will answer your questions. All right, so that's all for now, until next time, peace.