09/07/2019
Core Update, Relevance, and Quality
John Mueller, a Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, was asked in a Webmaster Hangout what to do if a site is suffering a traffic loss due to Google’s June 2019 broad core algorithm update.
John Mueller’s answer provided insights into understanding what is happening.
John Mueller related that there aren’t specific things to fix. But he suggested that it may be useful to understand how users see your site, how useful your site is to users.
Here is a sample of the kinds of questions Google suggests you should ask yourself:
-“Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
-Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
-Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
-Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
-Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?”
Google’s algorithm does not really match keywords to web pages. It’s about solving problems for users. Google’s increasingly updating how it understands what users want when they type a query. Google is also updating how it understands the problems that a web page solves.
