From an SEO perspective, 2021 can be summed up as stressful — not just because of several algorithmic updates throughout the year but also possibly because of the timing of some of those updates. With the COVID vaccine rollout, some businesses began returning to normal, but then the Delta and Omicron variant threw everything for a loop — was it just too much to handle for some?
It may have been a bit too much to handle for Google as well: The search engine launched Page Experience update late, never hit its deadline for the mobile-first indexing this year and seemed to rush out two late. big algorithmic updates towards the end of the year.
Google’s June, July and November core updates rocked the SEO industry
June 2021 core update. Google took a while to release its first core update of the year, the June 2021 core update, which began rolling out on June 2, 2021. That update finished rolling out about ten days after it started, on June 12, 2021. This core update seemed to have been a slow rollout that had a bunch of mixed results based on the data given to us by several data providers.
Image: Semrush.
July 2021 core update. Shortly after the June core update, Google released the July 2021 core update on July 1, 2021 — this was kind of like part two of the previous June core update. This update took about 12 days to roll out, completing on July 12, 2021. Unlike the June core update, the July core update was fast to roll out according to the data providers.
November 2021 core update. Then several months later, Google hit us with the November 2021 core update, that started right before the big holiday shopping season on November 17, 2021. That update rolled out through Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday and completed on November 30, 2021, 13 days after it started. The November core update hit hard and quickly according to the data but many SEOs felt blindsided by the timing of that update.
well, they did do one around this time last year as well but at least it was after black friday https://t.co/VYypG5bHpj
Google’s April and December product reviews updates were new to SEOs
Not only did we have three core updates in 2021, we also had two product reviews updates. The product reviews update was a new kind of update, focused on content written around products and making sure Google only ranked the best and most useful product reviews in the search results.
April 2021 product reviews update. Google’s first product reviews update touched down on April 8, 2021. Google made a point to tell us this is not a core update and only impacted English content, but much of the same recovery advice reflected that of a core update. Google effectively finished rolling out that update on April 22, 2021, but there may have been some edge case tremors later, so it took approximately two weeks to rollout. That update was a big update but not as big as a typical core update, said the data providers.
December 2021 product reviews update. If the first product reviews update in April wasn’t enough, Google ran a second product reviews update named the December 2021 product reviews update that started on December 1, 2021. That update took about three weeks to rollout, and completed just days before the Christmas holiday, on around December 21, 2021.
Image: RankRanger.
The update felt bigger than the April product reviews update, according to the data providers. Of course, timing a product reviews update three weeks before Christmas might also put Google into the category of being out of touch with the e-commerce ecosystem.
Google’s spam and link spam updates provided some transparency for SEOs
Google also released a few spam related search algorithms updates, which Google was upfront and transparent about in terms of timing but, for obvious reasons, didn’t give too much technical detail on.
June 23, 2021 spam update. Google released a spam update on June 23, 2021, which began and finished on the same day. It was a 24-hour update target spam efforts in Google Search.
June 28, 2021 spam update. Then the following week, Google released part two, the June 28 spam update. That update also started and finished on the same day, a 24-hour roll out.
July 2021 link spam update. The following month, Google released a July link spam update that started on July 26, 2021. Google said that rollout would be done in about two weeks but it was completed after about four-weeks, two weeks longer than expected. The rollout finished on August 24, 2021 and target spammy links that tried to manipulate the Google search results.
Google’s page experience update was a bit delayed but went live
Google postponed the launch of the page experience update by a couple of months, but it did go live on June 15, 2021. That rollout took a long time — it rolled out for a few months and finished rolling out around September 2, 2021. As a reminder, you should not have seen huge ranking changes in Google Search for this release. This was a slow rollout and Google originally advised not to expect drastic changes.
Image: Google.
Google did say that next year, in February 2022, the page experience update will be brought to desktop search.
Google’s local update in November
Not to be outdone by the web search algorithmic updates, Google also confirmed after the rollout was complete that it performed a local search update in late November. That update started on November 30, 2021, and ran through December 8, 2021.
Image: Joy Hawkins
This update seemed to focus on proximity factors and was code-named the Vicinity Update by the local SEO community.
MUM, passage ranking and subtopics
Passage ranking. Google spoke about passage ranking in 2020 but it wasn’t until February 2021 where Google actually started to use passage ranking. Passage ranking is a way of Google ranking specific passages from a web page in search; it is not a visual update to the search results but a ranking update.
MUM. Google also showcased MUM, Multitask Unified Model, which is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT.
Examples of search results for vaccines, powered by Google’s MUM. Image: Google.
It was first used this year for understanding the hundreds of variations of COVID vaccine names. Google has lots of ambitious plans for MUM in Google Search and beyond and has already expanded its use cases later in 2021.
Sub-topics. Google launched another AI-based ranking system named sub-topics rankings in November 2020. But Google didn’t tell us it went live until 2021 came around.
Mobile-first indexing delayed again
Google’s mobile-first indexing initiative, which started in 2016, was delayed again and scheduled to be completed in March 2021. Google decided to do away with the deadline this year and said this will get done when it gets done. So, if your site has not moved over yet to mobile-first indexing yet, hopefully sometime in 2022 it will be but Google won’t be giving us any more timelines on this initiative.
Other Google algorithm changes, updates, tweaks or topics
It has been a busy year. Google confirmed in 2020 that it released over 4,500 changes to search. I suspect that number will be higher for the 2021 year.
Google also released a predator update, as I like to call it, that demoted libelous content within its search results.
The company also released an image search update in February that reduced duplicate images in its image search results.
Google’s title tag changes caused a stir in the SEO industry. The company confirmed after the change went live that it made changes to the title snippet and what Google uses to show the title snippet. It also explained why it made the changes and a month or so later, made some tweaks to that title snippet algorithm.
Image: Semrush.
Finally, data has shown that the Google search results were more volatile this year than all previous years. SEOs have been working hard with all these changes and there has been more awareness around work-life balance in this space.
I’d expect more to come in 2022, so hopefully, this crazy busy 2021 prepared you for it.
Catch up on the biggest PPC news of the year or zoom out to see how 2020 unfolded for the SEO industry:
In 2021, SEOs faced a flurry of Google updates (including the highly anticipated yet possibly-overhyped Page Experience update), new search results page features like continuous scrolling and countless other updates that could potentially affect visibility for their brands — all while operating amid the second year of the COVID pandemic.
From core updates and title change fiascos to improved shopping options and new ways of tracking data, this year was full of surprises. Here’s our look back at the most impactful SEO news, tactics and tools of 2021.
Core updates. Google released three major core updates — one in June, one in July and one in November. The first caused a lot of search volatility, with tools like MozCast reaching a temperature of 107.3°F on June 3. The July update continued this spike until it all died down around July 12.
On November 17, Google announced a third, somewhat surprising core update, just days before the Thanksgiving holiday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to many tracking tools, this update had higher volatility than June and July’s. Due to the speedy rollout and widespread ranking shifts, many SEOs rightfully wondered why Google chose this time of year to release such a large update.
Page title rewrites. Of all the algorithm updates from this past year, the changes to Google’s page title rewrites in the search engine results pages (SERPs) were the most controversial. Marketers began noticing significant changes to their SERP titles around mid-August.
Examples of Search Engine Land titles that were changed by Google. Image: Brodie Clark.
Following a slew of feedback claiming huge decreases in result quality, Google rolled back some of these updates later in September. But many sites still experienced major ramifications in the following months, including our own properties.
Spam updates. Google released a number of major spam updates throughout the year. The first set rolled out on June 23 and June 28, although there wasn’t much of a noticeable impact on rankings.
The second update, released on July 28, targeted link spam. Rather than penalizing sites with bad links, Google stated that it focused on ignoring those signals.
The final spam update rolled out in November. Google didn’t offer much detail on this update, but search volatility skyrocketed following the release.
Product reviews updates. This year, Google launched two updates to help combat spam and/or thin product reviews. The first update was released in April and the follow-up came in December. Both of these were designed to prioritize reviews with in-depth research, including “content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well.”
Passage indexing. Google introduced passage indexing, an algorithm tweak that ranks segmented pieces of content on a page, to the SERPs in early February. Google now displays these passages as featured snippets and links users to that particular part of the page.
Example of Google’s passage ranking from a specific part of a page.
The year in SEO news
The SERP. Google added an “about this result” box to the SERP in February, giving searchers more information about their results. It expanded this feature in July.
“About this result” display in SERPs. Image: Google.
In a similar fashion, Microsoft Bing launched Page Insights in November, which features a lightbulb icon next to each search result that gives searchers more details about them.
Google added free listings to its Hotel search in March. Later, in December, it allowed hotels to use Google Posts in a limited manner to extend their local reach.
Google also rolled out continuous scroll on mobile search in October, which seemed like it would encourage more clicks on results past page one. SEOs are still measuring what impact this change has had on CTR.
Continuous scroll on Google mobile search. Image: Google.
In November, the search company added features designed to give more visibility to local news content.
On the Microsoft side, Bing Search gained a new interface to make its results more appealing, including an infographic-like search panel and expandable search carousels. It also introduced “Make Every feature Binary” (MEB), a new algorithm model designed to help improve search relevance. And in October, the company released IndexNow, a cross-search engine collaboration with Yandex to set a protocol that would index any new content instantly.
COVID-related updates. As many marketers know, the pandemic has spurred on more interest in SEO as businesses search for new ways to connect with customers. This interest in SEO has remained high over the past year, but there were a number of additional trends. These included an increase in searches for local businesses and pandemic-focused topics.
In April Google announced that additional COVID-related travel advisory information would be shown in Google Search to assist with trip planning. It also expanded its Explore section for its travel site.
In December, Google began rolling out a search feature that lets users see if a doctor or healthcare facility takes their insurance — no doubt spurred on by the increased number of COVID cases worsened by holiday gatherings and the Omicron variant.
Yelp introduced “Proof of vaccination required” and “Staff fully vaccinated” profile attributes. It also added a health and safety measures community feedback feature to help consumers learn more about local businesses’ health and safety compliance. And, to help prevent customer confusion, it added a virtual restaurant attribute.
SEO documentation. Google published updates to its search documentation throughout the past year, though some of those changes weren’t officially announced.
The company quietly published new manual actions targeting News and Discover penalties in February. In June, Google offered an SEO guide to address HTTP status codes, network issues and DNS errors. And in October, it refreshed its search quality guidelines to expand on the concepts of YMYL content and lowest-quality content.
Microsft also published a list of Bingbot IP addresses in November to better alert users when it was crawling their sites.
Diversity and inclusion. In response to the growing amount of hateful rhetoric and attacks against people of color, women, and other minority groups, industry leaders — both search professionals and brands — made pushes for change.
Google announced in February that it would be changing its policies toward diversity research, following its questionable firing of AI ethicist Timnit Gebru. Due to criticism of how the situation played out, the company said it would tie business goals more closely to inclusivity and diversity — and change how it handles employee exits.
In April, Yelp rolled out an Asian-owned business profile attribute in response to the recent rise in anti-Asian violence and xenophobia. Later, in May, the company introduced an LGBTQ-owned attribute option to celebrate pride month.
Third Door Media (the parent company of Search Engine Land and SMX) held the second annual Search Engine Land Award for Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Search Marketing. The previous winner, Areej AbuAli, served as a judge, with Rejoice Ojiaku and hasOptimization earning the accolade in 2021.
Rejoice Ojiaku, winner of the Award for Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Search Marketing
We also put together a list of inclusive marketing resources to help marketers highlight their brand values. Besides being the right thing to do, becoming a more inclusive organization has been shown to be better for your brand.
Image and YouTube. In February, Google provided documentation on image SEO best practices. The advice was focused primarily on ranking well in Google Images, but marketers can apply many of the suggestions to image ranking in general.
YouTube, seeking to assist creators with their reach, added video chapter previews and auto-translate captions. And in December, it launched a new feature that automatically linked to places mentioned in videos, giving users even more context.
Structured data. In May, Schema.org launched its schema markup validator tool in response to Google deprecating its structured data tool. It’s for more “general purpose” use than Google’s Rich Results tool.
In August, Google updated its Article structured data help document to reflect changes to its author properties. It added an author URL property to more easily identify authors of articles.
Industry and legal news. After postponing the mobile-first indexing deadline — first moving it from September 2020 to March 2021 — Google decided to leave the deadline open-ended. It said that there are still many sites not ready to shift over due to unexpected challenges they’re facing.
Mozilla tested Bing as the default search engine for 1% of Firefox users, leading many SEOs to reconsider the importance of optimization for non-Google search engines.
DuckDuckGo pushed past 100 million searches in a single day on January 11, showing how important private search experiences are to a growing number of users. And in December, the company announced that it’s working on a desktop browser, further signaling their support for greater privacy in search.
The battle for data privacy continued throughout 2021 with additional legal actions brought against Google. On March 12, a California judge ruled that Google must face a lawsuit claiming it tracks users in Incognito mode. In response, Google released a court filing saying that it makes clear that “Incognito” does not mean “invisible.” And in November, Google managed to win a dismissal of the U.K. Top Court’s data privacy suit relating to iPhone users.
Google’s run-ins with policy hit issues across the board. In October, the tech giant faced allegations from 17 state attorneys claiming it throttled non-AMP ads to give AMP a boost. This, along with Google’s decision to remove the AMP requirement from Top Stories, led many publishers to reconsider using the format.
Google was also fined €500 million ($589 million) by the French Competition Authority for failing to comply with negotiations with news outlets. Later, it lost a key appeal against the EU’s €2.4 billion ($2.8 billion) fine against the company from 2017, which found that Google broke an antitrust law in how it promoted its search engine regarding shopping.
In December, the company came under investigation for alleged harassment and discrimination against Black female workers. The report said the regulator began looking into the company’s practices after formal complaints.
Google Search Console (GSC). In April, Google released a pilot tool in Search Console that allowed users to report indexing issues; it was fully rolled out in August. Google also added practice problem rich results data, providing more insights for education content publishers. We also saw an upgrade to the AMP debugging section, which now links users to the AMP page experience guide.
To improve accessibility and user experience, Google introduced a new design for Search Console in November (shown below).
Google Search Console’s new design.
On December 14, the Review Snippets rich results report was updated, reducing the number of review objects; namely, the top-level schema.org/Rating objects.
Google Analytics 4. Google announced changes to Google Analytics 4 that included integration with Search Console, new machine learning models and data-driven attribution features. Interestingly, the language in this update suggests that the company may be considering sunsetting Universal Analytics in the not-too-distant future.
Google also unveiled a new version of Analytics 360, the company’s suite of products designed for enterprise-level companies, using Analytics 4 as its foundation.
Bing Webmaster Tools. Microsoft released its Bing content submission API to all users. Unlike its URL submission API, this version lets users submit content, images and HTML to the index as well.
Google Question Hub. In January, Google opened up its Question Hub for US-based publishers — it’s been available to users in India, Indonesia and Nigeria since 2018. The tool “enables creators to create richer content by leveraging unanswered questions,” according to Google.
Retail and e-commerce
In April, Google began enforcing its policy requiring merchants to show the actual price of items throughout the entire checkout phase. The company also updated Google Merchant Center’s product data specification requirements to encourage optimized Google Shopping ads and organic listings.
Google Shopping and WooCommerce partnered together in June to help retailers show their listings across Google. The search engine also released an e-commerce SEO guide to help improve retail sites’ search visibility. These updates reflected the changing landscape of retail due to COVID-19.
In an effort to put more offers in front of users, Google added a “Deals” feed to the Shopping tab and Merchant Center. It also began showing retailers when their items were eligible for badges. And, in order to show relative visibility and other metrics, Google provided Merchant Center users with a relative visibility report.
Google Merchant Center’s competitive visibility report. Image: Google.
In November, Bing Shopping introduced customer-focused tabs to help shoppers find what they were looking for in one place. This update also made it easier for retailers to list their products. And later in December, Microsoft Bing launched the Ethical Shopping hub in the UK, which helps users shop for eco-friendly and fair-trade fashion items.
Microsoft also announced a partnership with Shopify to integrate Bing Shopping with the retail platform, which rolled out in December.
Local
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). Early in the year, Google released a tool to help businesses better manage reviews, enabling business owners to monitor the status of reviews they’ve flagged.
On November 4, Google announced it would be renaming Google My Business to Google Business Profile. Along with this update, the company released new features that would give marketers and business owners more control over their accounts, which include:
Claiming and verifying Google Business Profiles directly in Google Search and Google Maps;
Call history launching in the U.S. and Canada;
Messaging directly from Google Search; and
Message read receipts being controlled within Search and Maps.
Maps. The importance of local maps has only increased throughout the past year. We saw a deeper integration between these and local business profiles across the board.
Google Maps started showing price ranges for U.S. restaurants, adding to a rollout of new features focused on expanding indoor business directories, which included airports, malls and transit stations.
Microsoft Bing introduced a new feature that allows users to search local stores. It’s designed to enable searchers to check store stock, helping them choose whether to buy online and pick up in-store.
Bing’s local store search feature in action.
Later in November and early December, Google rolled out an update to how it ranked the local search pack and map pack results. Termed the “Vicinity Update,” the change drastically impacted local rankings across industries.
Local SEO tools. Google Business Profile Product Experts worked together to help users find unique listing identifiers. Using a Chrome extension called GatherUp, they showed profile managers how to find their business’s unique CID number, which is useful to know when listings are merged or duplicated.
To help local businesses expand their reach, Yelp rolled out Custom Location Targeting, budget recommendations and other helpful local features. It also introduced custom search filters, themed ads and Project Cost Guides to support service businesses.
Looking forward to 2022
With so many algorithm and platform updates taking place this past year, many SEOs will be anxious to look at their data. Just remember: many of these updates are broad, and the most important thing for you to do is to keep your clients updated on Google’s changes.
Many brands are responding to user demand for greater accessibility and increased privacy, so be sure your websites and other properties are compliant and support all kinds of users.
Finally, we’re still a long way off from the end of the pandemic, so focus on answering your audience’s most pressing queries and making things as convenient for them as possible. Showing customers your brand’s values is more important than ever.
Google has confirmed that the December 2021 product reviews update is now finished rolling out. This update has officially completed rolling out a few days before Christmas.
The announcement. “The Google product review update is fully rolled out. Thank you!” Google’s Alan Kent wrote on Twitter.
The Google product review update is fully rolled out. Thank you!
December 2021 product reviews update. As a reminder, the December 2021 product reviews update started to roll out at about 12:30pm ET on December 1, 2021. This update took 20 days to roll out after it was announced. So this update started on December 1, 2021 and lasted through December December 21, 2021.
When and what was felt. Based on early data, this update was not a small update. It was bigger than the April 2021 product reviews update but also seemed to continue to remain pretty volatile throughout the whole rollout. The community chatter and tracking tools were all at pretty high levels consistently for the past few weeks.
Why we care. If your website offers product review content, you will want to check your rankings to see if you were impacted. Did your Google organic traffic improve, decline or stay the same?
Long term, you are going to want to ensure that going forward, that you put a lot more detail and effort into your product review content so that it is unique and stands out from the competition on the web.
More on the December 2021 products reviews update
The SEO community. The December 2021 product reviews update, like I said above, was likely felt more than the April version. I was able to cover the community reaction in one blog post on the Search Engine Roundtable. It includes some of the early chatter, ranking charts and social shares from some SEOs. In short, if your site was hit by this update, you probably felt it in a very big way.
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by this product reviews update. We posted that advice in our original story over here. In addition, Google provided two new best practices around this update, one saying to provide more multimedia around your product reviews and the second is to provide links to multiple sellers, not just one. Google posted these two items:
Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.
Google product reviews update. The Google product reviews update aims to promote review content that is above and beyond much of the templated information you see on the web. Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings.
Google is not directly punishing lower quality product reviews that have “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” However, if you provide such content and find your rankings demoted because other content is promoted above yours, it will definitely feel like a penalty. Technically, according to Google, this is not a penalty against your content, Google is just rewarding sites with more insightful review content with rankings above yours.
Technically, this update should only impact product review content and not other types of content.
Google announced last week that it rolled out an update to the local search and map pack results. It began on November 30 and finished on December 8.
We noticed really dramatic differences in ranking on December 6, 2021. My agency named the update “The Vicinity Update” because the most significant impact we saw was that Google made it so that smaller, less established businesses that are closer to the user are now ranking better than overpowered businesses further away. Google said that it “rebalanced” the factors that make up the algorithm and we have observed that proximity got a big boost while some relevance factors declined.
What industries did it impact?
This update was dramatic, and in my findings, is the biggest update we have seen in local search since the Hawk update in 2017. Some industries are seeing the impact more than others. We are seeing huge differences for lawyers, home services, insurance, dentists, and many others. It’s important to note that you won’t likely see the impact of this update unless you are doing grid tracking that shows you how far away from your office you rank.
The winners
The winners in this update are:
Businesses that don’t have keywords in their business name but have strong competitors that do.
Secondary locations for prominent businesses. For example, I’ve seen almost uniformly, across every example I’ve looked at, that the primary location for a business took a hit but their newer offices increased. Here is an example in the insurance vertical:
Top 3 Rankings Before
Top 3 Rankings After
Difference
Business A – Main Location
848
668
-180
Business A – Second Location
67
97
30
Business B – Main Location
122
98
-24
Business B – Second Location
21
46
25
The losers
The losers from this update are:
Businesses that ranked really far from their office.
Businesses with keywords in the business name.
For example, below are screenshots from a business that meets both criteria. One of the keywords that describes their service is a part of their actual LLC name. They used to rank really far from where they are located and no longer do.
The pins indicate the location the user is searching from. Green pins indicate the business ranks in the top three results, yellow pins indicate the business ranks near the top three results and red pins mean the business does not rank near the top three results.
Why we care
Google has weighted keywords in the business name too heavily for as long as I can remember. This often leads to businesses adding them, regardless of the fact that it breaks Google’s guidelines, because it has such a significant impact on ranking It has also led to Google showing fake listings in the search results instead of real businesses. With this update, businesses that are newer and trying to follow Google’s guidelines should have a much greater shot of ranking.
On December 1, 2021, Google began to roll out the second product reviews update of the year, the December 2021 product reviews update. This was at the tail-end of the November 2021 core update that finished rolling out the day before, on November 30, 2021 (note, this is an important point for this story). RankRanger and Semrush, two SEO toolsets, sent us data that showed that the December 2021 product reviews update was more volatile than the April 2021 product reviews update — but there may be some caveats to that.
Please note that Google told us that this product reviews update will take approximately three weeks to roll out and we are only now in the start of week two. So, the data may change but generally when Google rolls out these updates, the bulk of the impact you would see from an update would be in the first few days of that rollout.
Data providers show December was bigger than April
RankRanger. The RankRanger team first sent us their data showing that overall, the December fluctuations and volatility “were substantially higher in the top three and top five positions,” the company said. This is across comparing the changes in the top-three, top-five and top-ten ranking positions in Google Search:
The April PRU is shown in blue and the December PRU is shown in orange.
This is also when looking at average position changes overall between April (in blue) and December (in orange) product reviews updates:
The company also broke down just the December volatility by niche across sectors by top-three, top-five and top-ten results. The company showed the top-five positions both retail and travel stand out as having the most fluctuations and in the top ten results, health and finance showed the most fluctuations.
Top winners and losers were also provided by RankRanger, showing Tripadvisor, Choice Hotels, Agoda and Hotwire were the losers and Expedia, Kayak, U.S. News & World Report were the top gainers.
Semrush. The Semrush team first sent us their data showing that overall the December fluctuations and volatility also peaked at much higher rates than the April product reviews update. The company said that the volatility highs seen during the December update are far greater than what was recorded in the April update.
But Semrush said that if you look at the overall volatility, it would appear that the April update was 44% more volatile than the December update. That is likely because this year overall was a lot more volatile than previous years, sending the numbers a bit off overall. If you look at level of volatility as compared to what Semrush normally would see, the April Product Review Update was significantly more volatile. Here is that chart showing this data:
But again, this is not a normal year and the chart showing the peak volatility is probably a better measurement of which update was more significant.
Semrush also broke down this update by vertical for the top-five and top-ten search results. The shopping vertical seemed to have seen the most drastic movement with 6% of the top ten coming from positions 20+ — that would make sense, being this is a product reviews update.
The Semrush sensor tool is now starting to show this update somewhat slow down a bit:
Core update impact, if any?
Like I said above, this year overall was a lot more volatile than previous years, which may be setting some of this tracking off a bit. We just finished rolling out the November 2021 core update about 24 hours before the December product reviews update started to roll out. It is possible the tracking tools data may have some overlap. Between it being a crazy year with volatility in general, both in terms of confirmed and unconfirmed updates, and the confirmed updates being very close together, it is hard to say with 100% confidence which update was bigger.
Semrush did tell us that the November 2021 core update was bigger than the December product reviews update, but they are two different types of updates and that makes sense. In fact, The December product reviews update is not showing huge amounts of movement compared to the November core update, Semrush said.
In fact, Sistrix, another tool provider, told us early on that they did not see huge changes with this update and didn’t have data to share with us overall. They simply didn’t see huge changes with the products reviews update in general.
More on the December 2021 products reviews update
The SEO community. The December 2021 product reviews update, like I said above, was likely felt more than the April version. I was able to cover the community reaction in one blog post on the Search Engine Roundtable. It includes some of the early chatter, ranking charts and social shares from some SEOs. In short, if your site was hit by this update, you probably felt it in a very big way.
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by this product reviews update. We posted that advice in our original story over here. In addition, Google provided two new best practices around this update, one saying to provide more multimedia around your product reviews and the second is to provide links to multiple sellers, not just one. Google posted these two items:
Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.
Google product reviews update. The Google product reviews update aims to promote review content that is above and beyond much of the templated information you see on the web. Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings.
Google is not directly punishing lower quality product reviews that have “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” However, if you provide such content and find your rankings demoted because other content is promoted above yours, it will definitely feel like a penalty. Technically, according to Google, this is not a penalty against your content, Google is just rewarding sites with more insightful review content with rankings above yours.
Technically, this update should only impact product review content and not other types of content.
Why we care. If your website offers product review content, you will want to check your rankings to see if you were impacted. Did your Google organic traffic improve, decline or stay the same? Long term, you are going to want to ensure that going forward, that you put a lot more detail and effort into your product review content so that it is unique and stands out from the competition on the web.
We hope you, your company and your clients did well with this update.
Google is now rolling out a new search algorithm update named the December 2021 products reviews update. This is the second time Google is pushing out a products reviews update this year, doing one back in April 2021.
This update is “designed to better reward” product reviews that “share in-depth research, rather than thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products,” a spokesperson told Search Engine Land in April. Reviews that are written in a way that has “insightful analysis and original research” will be rewarded, especially “content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well,” Google said.
What is changing. Google said that if you made changes between now and the last update, you may see improvements to your rankings since the last update. Google wrote “if you have made positive changes to your content, you may see that improvement reflected as part of this latest release.”
Google also said the search company has “received more feedback from users on what type of review content is deemed trustworthy and useful, motivating us to provide additional product review guidance. Users have told us that they trust reviews with evidence of products actually being tested, and prefer to have more options to purchase the product.”
More advice. Google provided two new best practices around this update, one saying to provide more multimedia around your product reviews and the second is to provide links to multiple sellers, not just one. Google posted these two items:
Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.
Rolling out now. Google said the update is now rolling out for English-language pages. It will take about three weeks to complete.
Google product reviews update. The Google product reviews update aims to promote review content that is above and beyond much of the templated information you see on the web. Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings.
Google is not directly punishing lower quality product reviews that have “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” However, if you provide such content and find your rankings demoted because other content is promoted above yours, it will definitely feel like a penalty. Technically, according to Google, this is not a penalty against your content, Google is just rewarding sites with more insightful review content with rankings above yours.
Technically, this update should only impact product review content and not other types of content.
Previous advice on the product reviews update. The “focus overall is on providing users with content that provides insightful analysis and original research, content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well,” Google said about this update. That is similar advice to the core update recommendations mentioned above, but here is a list of “additional useful questions to consider in terms of product reviews.” Google recommends your product reviews cover these areas and answer these questions. Do your product reviews…
Express expert knowledge about products where appropriate?
Show what the product is like physically, or how it is used, with unique content beyond what’s provided by the manufacturer?
Provide quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance?
Explain what sets a product apart from its competitors?
Cover comparable products to consider, or explain which products might be best for certain uses or circumstances?
Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a particular product, based on research into it?
Describe how a product has evolved from previous models or releases to provide improvements, address issues, or otherwise help users in making a purchase decision?
Identify key decision-making factors for the product’s category and how the product performs in those areas? For example, a car review might determine that fuel economy, safety, and handling are key decision-making factors and rate performance in those areas.
Describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturer says?
Why we care. If your website offers product review content, you will want to check your rankings to see if you were impacted. Did your Google organic traffic improve, decline or stay the same?
Long term, you are going to want to ensure that going forward, that you put a lot more detail and effort into your product review content so that it is unique and stands out from the competition on the web.
November 2021 core update. As a reminder, the November 2021 core update started to roll out at about 11 a.m. ET on November 17, 2021. This update took 13 days to roll out after it was announced. So this update started on November 17, 2021 and lasted through November 30, 2021.
When and what was felt. Based on early data, this update seemed to roll out fast and in a significant manner for many queries the data providers track. We did see some “tremors,” shifts in volatility, after the initial update the day before and the day of Thanksgiving, as well as on November 30th, these are the final sets of volatility you would see from the initial broad core update release.
More on the November 2021 core update
The SEO community. The November 2021 core update, like I said above, was felt fast and hard. Not just in terms of the ranking impact but the timing. I was able to cover the community reaction in one blog post on the Search Engine Roundtable. It includes some of the early chatter, ranking charts and social shares from some SEOs.
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. There aren’t specific actions to take to recover, and in fact, a negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages. However, Google has offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Google did say you can see a bit of recovery between core updates but the biggest change you would see would be after another core update.
Why we care. Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google makes these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your website or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm.
If your site saw any changes between November 17 and November 30, it was likely related to the November core update.
On November 17, 2021, Google began rolling out the November 2021 core update, this came about four and a half months after the July 2021 core update, which was a month or so after the June 2021 core update. So we had a total of three broad Google core updates in 2021.
We asked several data companies that track Google’s search results to send us impressions of this update. The results from this data showed that this rollout hit hard within the first 24 hours of the announcement and then slowed fast. Keep in mind, Google has not confirmed that this update is done rolling out yet. Most reports show that there are signs that the November 2021 update was more substantial than the July 2021 update.
The facts. Google began rolling out the November 2021 core update at around 11am on November 17, 2021. This update has not finished yet and is still rolling out as far as we know. We do however expect that the bulk of the impact of this update has been felt in the first day or so after this update, although there may be some residual affects that linger on for the next week or so. The timing of this November core update has a lot of us feeling a bit blind-sighted, as it was released right before the busiest time for most e-commerce sites.
The July 2021 core update started to roll out at around noon on July 1, 2021 and completed on July 12, 2021. The June 2021 core update, as we previously reported, started to roll out around 6:30pm ET on Wednesday, June 2nd. Like all core updates, this was a global update and was not specific to any region, language or category of web sites. It is a classic “broad core update” that Google releases every several months or so. The previous core update before the back-to-back June and July core update combo, was just shy of a six-month wait period, where the December 2020 core update took place on Dec. 3rd.
Semrush. Semrush data showed that the November 2021 core update hit hard and then slowed very quickly in terms of its volatility tracker, as screen captured below or you can view live at the the Semrush Sensor tool.
“This is similar to how the July update rolled out but the return to “normal” levels of fluctuations was even more dramatic here (i.e., less of a “slow down” period compared even to July),” Mordy Oberstein from Semrush told us.
The November update was “far more volatile” than what we saw back in July core update, the company told us. Specifically the November update was 12% more volatile than July core update on the desktop search results and 23% more volatile on mobile search results. So when digging into this update, make sure to check your mobile results, not just your desktop results.
Here is a chart plotting the different between the November and July 2021 core updates by sector:
You can see how the health sector saw 41% more volatility on both desktop & mobile in November 2021 core update than it did back in July 2021 core update. Often, the health sector is more impacted by core updates than some other sectors.
Even more so, 16% of the top 20 results were not listed in the Google Search results prior to the November update. Meaning, 16% of the ranking URLs between positions 1-20 ranked worse than position 20 prior to the update, Semrush said.
And here is a chart of the winners and losers from this November 2021 core update from Semrush:
RankRanger. The RankRanger team also analyzed the Google search results after this November core update rollout. They also found that this update rolled out pretty quickly, although it may not be done yet. Shay Harel from RankRanger said “this update shows similar levels of fluctuations to the July Core update.” But he said this is when you look at the the top three and top ten results. However, the top five results showed substantially higher fluctuations, Shay Harel told us. They also noticed that average changes over the top 20 positions the company saw slightly lower levels than the July core update update.
This chart below shows the changes based on top 3, top 5 and top 10 results:
Also, if you look at the health, finance, retail and travel niches, RankRanger is showing fairly even fluctuations, with the exception of the retail niche. It seems retail saw greater fluctuations in the top three and top five positions, the company told me.
Here is a chart that shows that:
SISTRIX. The folks at SISTRIX, another data provider that tracks the changes in the Google search results sent me their top 20 winners and losers for the November 2021 core update.
Here is a chart comparing some of the websites competing in the dictionary space, seems like these four really saw some big gains with this update:
seoClarity. Mitul Gandhi from seoClarity told us that there is a “large amount of fluctuation lasting a few days,” which he said is common with most Google core updates. The seoClarity team shared some of the biggest changes they saw across some big brands.
For example in the e-commerce niche, Wayfair and eBay stood out to seoClarity with the initial data from November 16th compared to November 18th analysis as having significant drops. But there was a bounce back shortly after for some reason with Wayfair and eBay. Here is a graph from seoClarity of Wayfair’s search visibility:
Walmart and HomeDepot have seen their keywords in top three positions in Google Search increase by 10% and 19% respectively, “boding well for their holiday season,” Mitul Gandhi said. Bed Bath and Beyond saw a 45% jump in their top three positions in Google Search. But those top retailers selling footwear saw a drop, specifically Zappos lost 23% of their top 3 rankings while DSW lost 25%.
In other areas outside of e-commerce, Booking.com saw the strongest improvements in rankings in the seoClairty data set. Between 11/16 and 11/21 they are ranking for around 18,000 more keywords in the top three positions in Google Search. Whereas Skyscanner was the notable decline in travel, losing 23% of their keywords in top 3 positions. SnagaJob.com seems to have lost 60% of their top 3 rankings while SimplyHired.com lost 19%. Car and Driver lost 11% of its keywords in top 3 positions. And Pinterest lost 13% of its top 3 rankings, while Etsy gained 19% in top 3 positions.
Mitul Gandhi from seoClarity told us “don’t panic! Initial fluctuations are not where many will end up as Wayfair and Ebay have shown.” Mitual Gandhi also shared some early data on Twitter this past Friday, but the data above is fresher from its data set.
More on the November 2021 core update
The SEO community. The November 2021 core update like I said above was felt fast and hard. Not just in terms of the ranking impact but the timing. I was able to cover the community reaction in one blog post on the Search Engine Roundtable. It includes some of the early chatter, ranking charts and social shares from some SEOs.
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. There aren’t specific actions to take to recover, and in fact, a negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages. However, Google has offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Google did say you can see a bit of a recovery between core updates but the biggest change you would see would be after another core update.
Why we care. It is often hard to isolate what you need to do to reverse any algorithmic hit your site may have seen. When it comes to Google core updates, it is even harder to do so. If this data and previous experience and advice has shown us is that these core updates are broad, wide and cover a lot of overall quality issues. The data above has reinforced this to be true. So if your site was hit by a core update, it is often recommended to step back from it all, take a wider view of your overall web site and see what you can do to improve the site overall.
We hope you, your company and your clients did well with this update.
Google is rolling out a new broad core update today named the November 2021 Core Update. This is the third core update Google released in 2021.
The announcement. Google announced this rollout on the Google Search Central Twitter account, not the Search Liaison account, which it has done for all other previous announcements on core updates.
Later today, we are releasing a broad core update, as we do several times per year. It is called the November 2021 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates is here:https://t.co/0LAL28ueDq
Rollout started at about 11am ET. Google updated us that the rollout has begun at about 11am ET. Google said “The November 2021 Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.”
Timing before holidays. It is a bit shocking to see Google rollout this update before, and likely during (assuming this is a normal two week rollout), the biggest online holiday shopping season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday is less than two weeks away and Google is rolling out this update starting today.
Previously Google took breaks before the holiday shopping season, it was Google’s gift to webmasters said former Googler Matt Cutts.
Danny Sullivan of Google responded to the timing of this update on Twitter:
I totally get the concern some might have about an update, especially when there’s often any number of “The sky is falling!” tweets that people make, sometimes with fun GIFs, and meant to be fun, but others that act like an update is a negative event for everyone…
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. There aren’t specific actions to take to recover, and in fact, a negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages. However, Google has offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Google did say you can see a bit of a recovery between core updates but the biggest change you would see would be after another core update.
Why we care. Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google makes these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your web site or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm. Today, we know Google will be releasing a core ranking update, so keep an eye on your analytics and rankings over the next couple of weeks.
The Google November spam update that began rolling out on November 3rd is now fully rolled out. Google has updated us 8 days after it first started to roll out that the rollout is complete.
The announcement. Here is the announcement about the update from Google on Twitter:
Impact. It is hard to say the full impact of this update, we feel this update “had legs” but you would have only noticed this update if you were doing some form of spam efforts that this algorithm targeted. Also, Google suggested this was about content spam and not specifically link spam.
Previous updates. Before this, the most recent confirmed Google update was back in July 2021 named the link spam update. Before that was the July 2021 core update, followed by the June 2021 core update, then part one and part two of the spam updates in June 2021. It’s been quite a year of updates.
Why we care. If you notice large ranking or traffic changes from your organic Google search results, you may have been hit by this spam update. Spam updates target specific guideline violations. This update may have been more focused on content spam efforts. Check your rankings and Google organic traffic over the past week to see if you noticed any big changes to your positions.
