An in-depth overview of Google’s algorithmic transformation in 2023.
In 2023, Google only released nine confirmed search ranking algorithm updates. In general, it was quite a volatile year.
In early 2023, from February to March the “Product Reviews Update” was the most searched one. After this, it is renamed as the “Reviews Update”.
Followed by it, “Core Update” was trending for almost the whole of March itself. It has the same volatility as the previous one and took 13 days to complete.
Later on, the “Reviews Update” was placed in April. It took 13 whole days as well, impacting the more categories of Review content. This update was not only concerned with product reviews but was also for add-ons like services, businesses, destinations, media and other review content.
Herein, almost a 4-month gap in the middle is there due to no confirmed Google Algorithm Updates.
Again, from August till early September “Core Update” was in feature for 16 days. After that, “Helpful Content Update” took over again in September. This one only occurred once in 2023 introducing huge changes. According to the SEOs too, this was quite an impactful update, particularly on websites focused on ranking well on search engines as opposed to more comprehensive sites.
In October, two updates were trending at a similar pace, “Spam Update” and “Core Update”. Later one took 14 days to complete.
“Spam Update” was introduced with an aim to clean up Spam reported in various languages like Turkish, Hindi, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian, and others. The main focus was to reduce visible Spam in search results resulting in cloaking, hacking, auto-generation, and scraped scams.
The following month, “Core Update” stayed as it was. This one seems to be the longest with a completion period of 29 days. Also, it got more volatility than the October one overlapping with the November “Review Update”.
After that, till early December “Review Update” took over.
A lot more unconfirmed Google search ranking updates were there as well.
The question that came up with the trend analysis is, how come Google brings the most of the updates in the holiday season itself?
To answer this, Danny Sullivan (Google’s search Liaison), on X clarified that they do updates throughout the year and tend to release them as and when they are ready. Further Sullivan linked to an article that talks about bringing no updates during the holiday season. He further elaborated that they try their best to avoid updates during mid-November and December. But there is no certainty of this always being possible.
He later emphasised if there is some update developed during the holiday period which can improve search, they try to release that without any delay.
If you liked this recap of Google Algorithm Updates 2023, don’t forget to share them with all the techies out there and leave your thoughts in the comments section on Google’s upcoming algorithm updates in 2024.
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