Published: November 28, 2024 Last Updated: November 28, 2024
Google Core Update: November 2024
Google announced on the 12th November that they had released their latest Google Algorithm core update. If you’ve read our info page on the Google Algorithm, you will know that a core update is significant and aimed at improving the overall search quality. It isn’t aimed at specific websites or practices, but to improve the overall quality of search results when you do a Google search.
Overall quality of search results
What does Google mean when it says this? It means that when we do a search for a specific topic, the webpages that are shown at the top of the page are the best ones to answer our query and give us the result we were looking for.
What do we know so far about this core update?
The biggest impact reported by the SEO community has been towards “AI Overviews”. AI Overviews (or AIOs) is Google’s new section on their search results page that uses AI to summarise what the listings say about your search query. Since their launch around May, people have been trying to work out what webpages Google uses to get this info. The latest core update seems to be matching this section up with overall rankings; which is what you’d expect.
How this will impact in Australia is still to be seen, as AIOs have just been launched here, though I’ve personally not seen them in the wild yet.
How to ensure your website isn’t impacted by core updates
The easiest way to take away the stress of core updates, is to ensure you stick to correct SEO practices as per Google’s guidelines. Some of the key guidelines to follow are:
- Create high quality, helpful content on your website
- Build your websites’ E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authority and Trust)
- Improve user experience with good design, clear navigation, mobile-friendliness and load speed.
- Avoid spammy techniques like dodgy content and links.
Should you be worried?
If you are already one of our clients, then do what we do, and relax and sleep well. At Probity Web Marketing, we ensure our SEO techniques are best practice and align with Google’s guidelines. That’s a big reason we have never embraced the many link-building schemes used by other SEO companies. We believe, like Google, that links will come naturally if we focus on building well-structured authority websites with great content. In fact, we love Google core updates as our client sites generally get a nice kick.
If you’re using an SEO company that only focuses on building links, then I’d be a bit concerned. If this update doesn’t get you, the next one might.