On May 4th, 2020 Google announced the release of a broad core algorithm update. It’s been labelled the May 2020 Core Update, and it’s one of the large changes to core algorithm that Google releases on a yearly basis which means it impacts a lot of sites.

Today, we are going to cover what changes the May 2020 Core Update brings and what are the 5 things everyone should need to know.

1. What are core algorithm updates?

Google is always working to improve the quality of their search results. They release one or more changes every day. However, those changes usually aren’t noticeable. when Google do make major algorithm or system updates, they label them as a ‘Core Update’. It’s important to understand what these changes might mean for your website whether you have a business, an e-Commerce store or a special interest blog.

Through these updates, Google aims to improve the quality and relevancy of results that are presented to users when they search for queries in the search engine. As with any other core algorithm update, many websites are going to experience volatile changes in their rankings.

2. What industries did this core update affect?

By looking at the effects of May’s 2020 Core Update, we learned that it was stronger than January’s update and influenced more search engine results pages and ranking positions. Industries that were most impacted as:

• Travel
• Real estate
• Health
• Pets & animals
• People & society
  Here is the chart of breakdown volatility by industry

Websites in the health, family, beauty, finance, internet, vehicles, and law & government had the biggest SEO “flux” during the update. Health was the top category that experienced the largest flux.

3. How core updates might affect your business

Some sites may experience drops or gains in organic rankings. The most important question to ask is “Was I affected?” If you were affected, you would have likely seen declines in rankings during the week of May 4th from Google Search in Google Analytics. These algorithms usually take 1-2 weeks to roll out and settle, so if you’re not experiencing declines during these times, you’ve likely not been impacted by the update.

If your website ends up seeing drops in organic rankings and traffic, the next likely question to consider is how much is this affecting your business from both a brand awareness and conversion perspective. The key question here is, “Does this update have a negative impact on my bottom line?”

     4.What you should do about it

The first thing to analyze is how much of your site was impacted. Was a certain section of your site impacted or has the whole site seen declines? With Core Updates, Google has said that if you’ve been affected, you should really be looking at your content’s quality and relevance to determine if your pages match a desired searcher’s intent.

     5.Was link quality a component of this update?

Google has told that core updates are usually not about link quality. While we have seen many Google updates in the past that did appear to assess link quality, we do not recall seeing a core update that we felt was tied with link quality.

With that said, many of the sites that saw significant declines with the May core update had a link profile that concerned us.

Conclusion

In order to maintain the current rankings of your site, it is recommended that you keep an eye on your Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor the performance and take the necessary actions. Further, it suggested that you check out what webmasters are required to know about Google’s core updates.