As the First Core Update of the Year, It Left Behind a Big Mark
From May 25 to June 9, Google slowly unleashed its first core update of 2022.
As we detailed in our newsletter a few weeks ago, marketers quickly started noticing some big shifts in search results.
Now that the rollout has had time to settle down, more reports have come out with just how much the update impacted various SERPs features, niches, and more. Let’s dive in.
4 Insights from the May Broad Core Update to Note
Thanks to some great analyses by Lily Ray of Amsive Digital and Marie Haynes of Marie Haynes Consulting, here are some of the main things you should know about the update:
- We mentioned before that featured snippets seemed to be a big target with this update. Many web owners reported that they saw a significant drop in featured snippets, but not in organic rankings.
- On the flip side, websites that catered to video saw great gains from the update. For example, rankings for TikTok grew by 99%, and given its popularity among various age groups over the past few years, it’s no surprise Google has taken notice.
- Some of the niches that seemed to have rare positive shifts from this update included nutrition, medical, health, and wellness sites. This was shocking, since in many previous releases they typically experienced losses in rankings.
- Large ecommerce websites such as Amazon, Target, eBay, and others all saw improvements as well. The majority of these sites also saw surges in visibility during the product reviews update that had rolled out in December 2021.
A Look Back on All the Updates We Had in 2021
So far in 2022, Google hasn’t released as many updates as they did the year prior. And when you are comparing yearly data, it’s important to be aware of any updates that could have impacted your data. Here is everything we encountered last year:
- February – Passage Ranking
- March – Mobile-First Indexing
- April – Product Reviews Update
- June – Page Experience Update, Link Spam Update (Part 1), and Broad Core Update (Part 1)
- July – Link Spam Update (Part 2) and Broad Core Update (Part 2)
- August – Meta Title Update
- October – Continuous Mobile Scroll Update
- November – Search Spam Update
- December – Product Reviews Update
More Related Articles
