The Latest Google Updates and What they Mean for You

Google is known for their famous algorithm updates, search index changes, and refreshes. Google search is changing all the time! In 2020, Google made 4,500 changes to their search algorithm. This number includes updates with their ranking system, user interface, and more. Google had also run more than 600,000 experiments, meaning there are about 12 changes per day. Let’s learn about the most recent major Google search algorithm updates.

2022 Google Algorithm Update

March 2022 Product Reviews Update

Google said the March 2022 product reviews builds on the
work of the two prior product review updates. Like the previous two, this
update was meant to help Google to identify high-quality product reviews and
reward site owners with better rankings.

This update provides new advice for ranked lists, recommendations
of “best” products and creating reviews for multiple vs. individual products.

2021 Google Algorithm Updates

November 2021 Local Search Update (November 30)

Google said that this global update was a “rebalancing of various factors we consider in generating local search results”. Google made it so that smaller, less established businesses that are closer to the user are now ranking better than overpowered business further away. Some industries are seeing a bigger impact than others. There was a noticeable change for lawyers, home services, insurance, dentists, and others. It’s important to remember that you most likely won’t see the impact of this update unless you are doing grid tracking that shows you how far away from your office you rank.

November 2021 Core Update (November 17)

This was the last of the third and final core update of 2022. Like all of Google’s core updates, the November 2021 core update was a wide reaching one that impacted websites and SEO across all language and took about two weeks to fully roll out.

Link Spam Update (July 26)

Google mentioned the reason for this update was to “nullify” spammy links across the web and including multiple languages. Websites that had those spammy links were more likely to see an impact on their rankings. Google’s advice from this update: follow best practices for all incoming and outgoing links.

July 2021 Core Update (July 1)

This was the second of the two back-to-back core updates. Being a typical core update, the July 2021 core update was a comprehensive update that seemed to change the whole algorithm slightly, but not directed towards any single function specifically. This core update rolled out over 12 days from July 1 to July 12.

Spam Update (June 23 and June 28)

Google announced the release this two-part Spam update to their systems. Both parts of the spam update were “global” updates which targeted both web results and image results.

Page Experience Update (June 15)

Google introduced a new set of metrics- Core Web Vitals- to better understand how users perceive the experience of a specific web page. The three Core Web Vitals metrics are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) which measures loading performance, First Input Delay (FID) which measures interactivity, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) which measures visual stability.

Also included in the Page Experience Update are the existing ranking signals, such as page load speed, mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, and lack of intrusive ads.

June 2021 Core Update (June 2)

This was the first of the two core updates that Google rolled out. Google had decided to release these updates separately because some of the updates were not ready yet. Like other Google core updates, the June 2021 update was comprehensive and wide-reaching. Many sites felt the impact of this update.

April 2021 Product Reviews Update

This update is meant to better reward product reviews that go above and beyond for example including in-depth and original research, and insightful analysis. Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings. Google also had provided a list of nine questions to ask about your product reviews to ensure they are insightful, including original research, and are written by experts or enthusiasts who understand the topic well.

Passage Ranking (February 10)

Google started to roll out a change to how it ranks specific passages from a web page in the search results. This update was meant to help searches find specific information. Google said this update would impact about 7% of search queries across all the languages.

Since this update was focused more on how Google understands your content, there was no specific advice on things to address or change, according to Google.

What to Expect in 2022

We have come to realize with the beginning of the new year it becomes harder to rank in Google and other search engines. There are over 1 billion blogs and over 1.7 billion websites meaning there is about 1 website for every 4.6 people which is making it understandably getting harder to be competitive.

Many resources we have read are mentioning the important changes that will come with Google updates in 2022. However, most of the SEO experts are talking about the increased importance of personalized content. Google will be recognizing content with the most reliable and relevant information and rank only sites with that high quality content. That means it’s crucial for your website performance that you implement quality and informative content to help boost your search engine results.

Summing it up, if you want to go with the time and have traffic pointing to your website in 2022, it’s important for you to take good care of your SEO and make sure your content is unique. Considering the challenges of the expected updates, it’s important to carefully inspect each aspect of your on-page SEO and pay close attention to your content.

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