Google Core Update January 2020

Google is the leading search engine in present times and is used by billions around the world, and so, it goes without saying that the company would look to make changes in the search engine’s algorithms to improve the users’ experience with it.

A few times a year, Google introduces what is known as a Broad Core Update. What it does is, it aims to improve the Google algorithm so as to understand the users’ needs as well as websites better. In other words, a Broad Core Update works to change the way in which websites are ranked or to enhance their relevance to match the users’ search queries. You must keep in mind that this is not Google’s way of targeting a particular website or its ranking but is a simple way of improving the relevance of websites with the intention of providing satisfactory results to users. However, there have been times that Google gave preference to certain websites in order to enhance their ranking, but the main responsibility lies on the creators, who must create and provide quality content.

Just like the many times it has done before, such as in April 2015, March 2019, etc., Google introduced a Core Update in January 2020. The January 2020 Google Core Update was announced on 13 January 2020 and subsequently began being implemented in different Google data centers; it is its first broad core algorithm update.

• The Announcement: Google follows a very transparent and open method of communicating with the world, and thus, it announced the introduction of the Core Update via Twitter on 13th January, followed by another tweet that stated that the update was live and ready to be distributed to different data centers. One of the main purposes of making this announcement was to put an end to the many speculations pertaining to its Core Updates as well as to remain completely transparent about such updates, given that Google had not announced the November 2019 Core Update in advance.
• The Roll- Out Time: According to various reports, the January 2020 Core Update took longer to roll-out or be distributed to different Google data centers than most of the preceding ones. The September 2019 update took about 2 days to completely roll-out while the March and June 2019 ones were done in no more than 3 days. The January 2020 update, on the other hand, took over 4 days to fully roll-out; the time period is considered longer than usual.
• Volatility Analysis: Volatility refers to the liability of change quite rapidly or unexpectedly and here is how the update affected different sectors in terms of volatility-
  • The health and finance niches experienced the most noticeable or considerable impact of the core update at the top of the SERP or Search Engine Results Pages. The finance niche experienced a 1,833% increase in volatility, while the health niche experienced a 77% increase.
  • YMYL or Your Money Your Life niches showed considerably higher levels of volatility than non YMYL niches.
  • The update resulted in extreme rank volatility, especially when looking at the top 10 positions on the Search Engine Results Pages.
  • The retail industry did not experience higher rank volatility due to the January 202 core update, than it did due to the December 2019 one.
  • When it comes to the travel niche, the January 2020 core update brought about a 24% increase in rank volatility, and it is quite evident that there is a greater distance between its volatility during the December 2019 update and the January 2020 update, just by looking at the top 5 results on the SERP.