New Broad Core Update From Google
Update: The June 2019 broad core algorithm update has now been officially released into the wild. According to the Tweet from the Google Search Liaison account, it will start taking effect in the coming days.
The June 2019 Core Update is now live and rolling out to our various data centers over the coming days.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 3, 2019
Update 2: According to a post to Danny Sullivan's Twitter account, the core update finished rolling out on June 7.
Also the core update is rolled out now.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 8, 2019
Update 3: Just a small note from Sullivan from June 8. There's a good chance Google will continue to pre-announce core algorithm updates in the future.
We probably will. But you won't be able to "fix" anything. Read our tweets on this that detail sites that drop aren't "broken" and focus on quality that might help regain relative standing isn't an overnight change.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 8, 2019
Google Pre-Announced Update
Google will roll out a new broad core update today, June 2, if they haven’t started already. In a rare move from Google, this was actually pre-announced on Sunday:
Tomorrow, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the June 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this tweet for more about that:https://t.co/tmfQkhdjPL
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 2, 2019
We don’t know exactly when this update is or was scheduled to start but as you can see in the Tweet above, Google will send out an update once it does.
What’s this Broad Core Update?
On his personal account, Danny Sullivan (the man behind the official Google Search Liason Twitter account) clarified that there’s nothing special that separate this broad core update from previous ones such as the updates from March 2019, August 2018 and March 2018:
Nothing special or particular "big." It's the usual type of core updates that we regularly do. We just wanted to be more proactive. Rather than people scratching their heads after-the-fact and asking "hmm?," we thought it would be good to just let folks know before it rolled out.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 2, 2019
The only thing that separates this update from the others is that Google announced this one ahead of time, Which, According to Sullivan, they did just to be nice.
Interestingly, a Tweet by Sullivan in response to a comment does make it sound like we might be getting more proactive communication from Google like this in the future.
Because we just wanted to be more proactive in communicating about the core updates. Rather than people wondering after-the-fact & us playing catch-up with a confirmation, we just thought we'd give notice ahead of time.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 2, 2019
One thing to note about this update though is that it’s apparently unrelated to all the indexing issues and bugs Google went through in April and May.
No.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 2, 2019
What You Can Do
Since Google is referring to this as a “broad core update”, there’s likely not going to be much (if anything) from them about how to respond to this update. Beyond their typical “publish great content” guidance. And there’s likely nothing specific this update will target or seek to reward/punish.
If your site has been negatively impacted by this update (once it does go live), focus on publishing high-quality content that satisfies your users’ needs and expectations and creating the best possible user experience for your audience.
We’ll be following up on this post once Google announces the update is live so stay tuned.
Reactions Around the Web
While it's still early to draw too many conclusions about this update, some marketers and website owners are already seeing some pretty sizeable changes to their site's performance.
Most noticeably is UK website DailyMail.co.uk. According to a Google Webmaster Help thread by SEO Director Jesus Mendez, the DailyMail lost 50% of its Google search traffic.
This is notable in that it's pretty rare for such a large site (according to Wikipedia it's the most visited English-language newspaper website in the world) to admit to being hit so hard by a Google update.
We learned this update is supposed to be a big one after a Twitter post by Danny Sullivan said the changes would be "definitely noticeable".
That’s about updates in general. The quote suggested I said that about core updates. Those are definitely noticable. That's why we confirm them.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 4, 2019
Here's a semi-random sample of reactions from the Webmaster World thread on the update:
How has the June Core Update impacted your site? Any big gains or losses? Let us know!
