Google announced its release of the core update on August 15, 2024, the last core update was on March 2024 when Google said it did not know when it would be released.
Google released the Google Core August Update (2024) after it had been tested, evaluated, and approved to be incorporated into Google search.
Google Search Central on their X ( Twitter) page tweeted “Today we released the August 2024 core update. It continues our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.
Google has promised to improve the search quality of useful content and wage war against content that feels like it was published for search engines.
Google search advocate, John Mueller also addresses that “As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high-quality sites, including small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content, when relevant to users’ searches,”
This core update is built and released upon Google’s mission to eradicate searches that do not meet the searcher requirement but help present helpful searches for users.
Google compares the core update to your friend who asks you for your best top food recommendations, though you have a list of your top 20 food restaurants. Things might have been different since you wrote some years back in 2019.
You might need to check what method new restaurants use to climb the table even if you have a positive experience there. It does not mean the restaurant that moves down is bad.
Major Fix In the August 2024 Core Update
Google on its help page has dropped a useful guide to those who think they are affected or care to know about the update.
If you’re seeing a drop in position and suspect it might correlate with the timing of a core update, use Search Console to determine whether you need to make a change.
To do so;
1. Be patient until the core update has been fully completed: Google advised that you check the search status dashboard to take note of the start and date, and recommends that you wait for a minimum of 1 week after the release of the update.
2. Check your site performance: To pinpoint if there is any change, google advised owners to check the previous week’s performance after the roll-out.
3. Review your top page and queries: What is the margin before and after the rollout? Large or small?
- Is the change small? dropping from 2 to 4? No need to take any action or make changes to content that is already performing very well.
- Large drop? ( 2 to 29 ?) A deeper assessment is needed to fix the underlying issue.
4. Search separately: This helps you understand the changes you have seen in Web Search, Google Images, Video mode, or the News tab.
FIXING A LARGE DROP IN POSITION
Google advised owners to check the self-assessment page if notice a large drop in position for your site as a whole. This will keep you in touch if your site delivers content that’s helpful, reliable, and people first.
Google recommends:
1. Be objective about the assessment.
2. Ask others to check and evaluate it for you ( possibly someone who is not affiliated with your site or you)
3. Evaluate the pages that were most impacted.
If you need to continue under the self-assessment questions, you can find these helpful
Google advises owners to focus on creating meaningful content rather than targeting content that is made primarily for search engines as it goes against Google missions for readers.
If most of your answers are yes to the below questions, then it is time you reevaluate what content you are putting out.
- Did you create content to lure visitors from search engines?
- Are you mass producing content on different hoping it performs well in search engine results?
- Do you make use of extensive automation to produce content on various topics?
- Do you mainly summarize what others put out with little to no value?
- Do you only put out trending topics to gain traffic?
- Does your content only lure readers without answering their questions?
- Does your content clickbait readers when it has no answers to their questions, such as the movie release date?
- Do you change the date on the content so it can seem fresh when it is not?
- Do you remove old content and put new content with the hope of helping and increasing your search rank?
Google recommendation when making changes;
1. Stop quick fix changes: Focus on making changes that make sense for your users and are sustainable in the long term instead of removing some page elements because you heard it is bad for SEO.
2. Make meaningful changes to improve your content: It could be that rewriting or restructuring your content makes it easier for your audience to read and navigate the page.
3. Do not delete: Deleting is a last resort if you think the content can not be improved.
It may take time for improvement to be effective if you make any changes, it may take days while some can take months to be effective on the search result, it takes time for Google system to learn and confirm that your page is now producing helpful, reliable, people-first content in the long term. And if it has been a few months then you will have to wait for the next core update.
Want to stay on top of Google Big SEO changes?
In SEO, you can find Google’s recent changes in its algorithm and features which we cover regularly. SEO requires continuous improvement as you have seen in the August 2024 core update.
Tools like Google Search Console and the self-assessment guide are there to align your content with Google’s criteria and requirements.
FAQ
1. What is the Google new core update?
Google keeps making new updates every time and then, but this time Google’s new update has made major changes in the ranking and algorithm. This has a lot of impact on the website because in updates there is more focus on quality user experience.
2. What changes does this update bring?
This time Google has updated that it is focusing more on content quality, user experience, and search results. Due to this, it can also affect the ranking of your website. If all these criteria are followed by your website then there will be no problem in the ranking of your website.
3. What should I do if my website rankings drop?
If the ranking of your website drops, then review your website, how is the contact quality, how is the user experience, is my website mobile friendly or not, and how is the loading time of the website. Please review all the items once again