If something cannot be denied, it is that SEOs are going to have a busy summer. At least when it comes to updates to the Google search algorithm. And it is that if those of Mountain View had already been a fairly lively year in terms of updates, they have decided to concentrate some of their most important updates throughout this summer.
Between June 2 and 12, Google carried out the June 2021 Core Update, an update of its central algorithm that, as announced at its launch, would have a second part this July. While this update was in development, an update to the local search algorithm was released on June 8. The same day that announced the end of the June 2021 Core Update, June 15, the implementation of the Google Page Experience Update began. The great update related to the loading speed of the site, safe browsing, HTTPS, compatibility with mobile devices, cumulative design changes and, ultimately, many of the values measured by the Core Web Vitals that we have already talked about in this blog on some occasions. An update that, started in mid-June, will run until the end of August.
But that’s not all … there’s more! During this month of June, Google has also carried out an update of its spam algorithm. Again, an update in two phases: the first on June 23 and the second on June 28. Finally, on July 1 Google announced via Twitter the launch of the expected July 2021 Core Update, the second part of the great update of the June search algorithm.
July 2021 Core Update
As Google announced on Twitter, this update will run for a week or two. And it represents the second part of the process started with the June 2021 Core Update. As explained “Some of our planned improvements for the June 2021 update are not quite ready, so we are moving forward with the parts that are, then we will continue with the rest with the July 2021 update. Most of sites will not notice any of these updates, as is typical with Core Updates”.
Google’s search algorithm variability tracking and analysis tools show the strong impact of the start of this update:
Previous updates to the core algorithm
Before these two big summer updates, the last big update was the December 2020 Core Update. A highly impactful update that particularly affected the websites of dictionaries and encyclopedias, which were the ones that lost the most positions. As Google had already indicated in October 2020 in its guidelines for search quality evaluators, under the section entitled “Classification of results from dictionaries and encyclopedias for different queries”, it ensured that these sites did not meet the user’s intention at all cases, and only under a specific context. On the other hand, social networks were gaining a lot of visibility, especially YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin. The drop in Amazon’s rankings was also particularly noteworthy.
Interestingly, it is noticeable that during the June 2021 Core Update, the sites that have gained more visibility have been precisely the websites of dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Effect of the July 2021 Core Update on Sinapsis accounts
Regarding the accounts that we manage at Synapse, we observed a strong impact from this update of the search algorithm. Only 16.1% of our websites have maintained some stability. 38.7%, at the moment, show a very accentuated upward trend. While a significant 45.2% of our websites have been affected by a drop in visibility. But it is too early to draw conclusions. These types of updates can take up to two weeks to develop.
From Sinapsis we will continue to monitor the effects of this great update and will shortly report the extent of its impact throughout its implementation.