Google's June 2019 Core Update

Think about all the questions you ask yourself each day. Most of them, you just end up Googling. It comes up with thousands of results. Each search you make is tailored to you and Google ranks them based on their relevance to your search. Each website in your search results vies to be the first one in line for your click. But how do you get those clicks?

So, when Google makes a change to their algorithm it causes changes in those search results. And companies want answers as to what happened. Since Google is so big, it can directly affect their revenue streams. It can even cause companies to go out of business just because their website doesn’t get as much traffic as it used to. And Google just changed their algorithm.

If you’re still wondering what these updates really did, here’s a summary of the June 2019 Google core update:

New Algorithm

As we all know, Google is constantly trying to update its algorithm to ensure the best user experience. In their most recent update, they allowed for people that update their site more often to have better search results. Those whose websites aren’t updated frequently will lose traffic subsequently. 

Two New Updates

Google rolled out two new updates instead of their traditional one, which they did most recently in March 2019. However, the June update is special because in addition to their regular algorithm update, they also rolled out what they are calling the “Diversity” update. This update ensures that the user isn’t bombarded with the same company on a search result and will only allow for one site to appear in a max two search results.

Niche Ranking Change

With each update, we see certain sector’s ranking on google searches increase or decrease positions based on specificity by the user’s search. With this update, the health, gambling, and finance niche were hit hard by the new update as they saw the largest changes in their ranking.

A Shift in News Traffic

Google’s new update was somewhat backwards in terms of getting people the most reliable news. This is especially true in an era in which people stress that they don’t have “fake news.” News outlets such as The Daily Post have seen losses of 50% in their daily search traffic and a 90% decrease in their discovery traffic (which is simply when internet users have a broader search which allows many results to come up such as this source).  If we are to assume that the demand for news hasn’t wavered, with every decline, there must be an increase in someone else’s views.

Outlets such as HuffPost, The Sun, and The Mirror saw jumps in their traffic due to the new update. These are sites that wouldn’t have normally popped up in broad news sources as much as larger news outlets would. Large shifts in views can be detrimental for a company that relies on customers reading their posts. Companies are demanding answers. However, it is still unclear to Google what the exact change in the algorithm made these large changes in search traffic. 

Lack of Updates

People felt like Google wasn’t listening to them in their most recent update. This was evident as there are many things absent from the June 2019 update that its users were demanding be fixed that Google just didn’t. These things include quality issues, missing biographies, and an abundance of advertising that remains on pages.

The update by Google came just three months after their prior update. Many users complained that nothing new really happened in this. However, there were more than meets the eye when it came to repercussions of the update. It is clear that many things came along with the update that people skimmed over. 

More Informative Than Product Heavy

A complaint that Google has had in the past, was that it has too many ads pushing products and the user can sometimes rarely find what they are looking for. When searching for health-related products to determine their validity and safety in taking them, normally a user is bombarded with ads for them to go buy it on Amazon. 

However, in this new June 2019 update, the algorithm has figured out that when someone searches for creatine, they want to know about usage rather than where to buy it. This creates a more informed user who makes smarter health choices rather than someone who will buy a supplement that they know nothing about. This causes the user to take the necessary time out of their day to read into it because Google will essentially force them to read it. 

Diversity Update

In addition to rolling out one update for all of the Google algorithms which they do from time to time, Google also made an additional change to its platform. This update is something they are calling the diversity update. This update helped limit SERPs (search engine results pages) which allowed for more diversity in the pages that pop up to a user. Instead of the same company having multiple pages pop up about a certain search, other websites will also appear and give the searcher diversity in their sources. Google limited the number per page to appear to two results. However, if the user’s query suggests that a user wants more of a certain page, such as if the user searches “Amazon”, the algorithm will allow for more than two pages by Amazon.com. In addition, this only influences core web results. So, if the same content is present on another site, it will still pop up because it is a different site and therefore the diversity aspect is still there. 

Google Announced the Updates Ahead of Time

Many people were surprised to see a tweet from Google announcing the update. Many times in the past, it wasn’t until after the update that people realized that there was an update that occurred and that it affected their website. However, it has occurred in the past where they have announced that they were rolling out something new. It just hasn’t been done in more recent updates. The difference with this update and why it might have needed announcement is because there were two updates. Normally in the past, it was easy to identify the changes made as there was only one shift in the algorithm being made. This time around it was much harder to piece together what update changed what as the updates were simultaneous.

Crypto Site Forced to Shut Down Due to Algorithm Shift

As mentioned earlier, multiple news sites saw traffic changes due to this update and that was consistent with news sites that focused on specific things such as Cryptocurrency news. The Norwegian company, CryptoCoinNews.com was forced to shut down after this mobile traffic declined 71% in searches due to the new algorithm updates. 

 If Google is telling the truth, it shouldn’t be too long before all those news companies that were affected get back to normal. All need to do is follow the guidelines of posting good content frequently that the algorithm has set out for them. While most Google users won’t even notice these changes, it shows that even when Google makes a few updates that people deem as “minor” or “unchanging” can have huge impacts on day to day search results.