Thousands of sites were delisted or dropped in the most recent Google core update that was completed on April 19th. It was one of the most sweeping updates in years. If your site took a hit in ranking, here’s why:
- GOOGLE IS AFTER LOW QUALITY CONTENT: “Low quality” sites with unhelpful, irrelevant, unoriginal content were targeted by this update.
- GOOGLE HAS PROMISED TO REMOVE UP TO 40% OF LOW QUALITY WEBSITES: Pages created just to match certain search queries.
- WHAT ABOUT SITES WRITTEN USING AI: Google is not after any site that makes use of AI in its composition, but this core update is after sites using pure AI that is cut and paste and of little relevance and value to the user.
- WHAT CAN YOU DO IF YOUR SITE TOOK A HIT? There is no quick fix, but certainly read Google’s definition of High Quality Content and rewrite your pages to comply.
- HIGH QUALITY CONTENT IS ASSESSED AT PAGE LEVEL: So if you have some medium or low quality content, your high quality pages will still be recognized by Google, but if mainly medium grade content it could have some impact on the high quality pages as well.
- CONTENT IS STILL KING: It influences the algorithms the most; however, site popularity is judged by clicks and recognizable branding also influences ranking.
If your site was unaffected, congratulations! Thousands upon thousands were not, and those webmasters whose sites were have a long road ahead of them as Google algorithms think in terms of months, not days.
Onward and upward!