From Panda to Penguin: the main Google updates at a glance

When was the last Google update? Who was affected and what were the consequences? These questions are answered in the following overview on the latest updates.

In spite of the Corona crisis, Google has not ceased work on its algorithm. Google announced its “May 2020 Core Update” on the 4^th of May 2020. Just a few hours later the update was rolled out, although according to Google it could take up to two weeks until the effects are noticeable in all areas. Just like the last major Google updates, the May 2020 Core Update was officially announced by Google on Twitter.

We weren’t even two weeks into 2020 when Google surprised webmasters with a new core update. Google announced their new “January 2020 Core Update” on the official Google SearchLiaison Twitter account:

All previous, general information on Google core updates also applies to the January 2020 Core Update.

After all the core updates this year, Google still has one more up its sleeve for the end of 2019. With the BERT update, Google will introduce one of the biggest changes to the search system since the introduction of RankBrain around five years ago. The BERT update was officially announced by the company in a blog article. BERT is an abbreviation of Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and is a neural network-based technique for Natural Language Processing (NLP) pre-training. The search engine company already introduced this technology back in November 2018 in one of its blog posts as well as releasing the technology as Open Source.

The aim of BERT is for user queries to be understood even better. For example, when a user enters a word, its context should be recognised and taken into account. In order for this to work, prepositions such as “for” or “to” will become more the focus of algorithmic analysis and evaluation.

Google will first introduce the BERT update for the English language, but more languages will follow. According to Google, the update is already expected to deliver significantly better results for one in ten queries in the USA. It may sound like a small amount, but it’s an enormous step forward. You can find some examples in the blog post.

In addition to the normal search results, Google is also planning to use the BERT update to improve featured snippets, i.e. the highlighted short answers that are occasionally found above the normal search results. According to Google, the BERT update will deliver better results in over 20 countries with the company explicitly mentioning the Korean, Hindi, and Portuguese languages.

Even though Google sees the new BERT update as a big step forward in improving its users’ speech understanding, the company is aware that many search queries still don’t deliver the perfect result. The company announced, however, that speech processing still has a way to go and that further improvements can be expected over time.

After Google began actively communicating its major core updates, webmasters were eager to see when Google would roll out the next update. About three months after the last update, the time came to release the “September 2019 Core Update”, the search engine’s third core update for 2019. Google is thereby maintaining a rhythm of one update per quarter for the current year. The company announced the latest core search update via its official Twitter account for webmaster communication - “Google SearchLiaison”:

As is the case with previous updates, Google does not comment very specifically on the changes that accompany the update. More information can be found on the Webmaster Central Blog, which is intended to serve as a guide for all those affected by the updates. The SEO tool developer Sistrix recognised that travel sites were most affected when conducting the first analysis for Germany and Spain. Websites from the healthcare industry were also affected, just like with the last major Google update.

The latest Google update for 2019 revealed one thing in particular: Google is increasingly trying to be somewhat more transparent. Google not only announced the core update a day earlier, but also gave the update an official name: "June 2019 Core Update" – very rare behaviour from Google.

By providing this information, the company decreases the amount of speculation, but as always, Google still remains reluctant to provide further information about the update. The search engine giant chooses not to reveal which screws have been tightened on the algorithm and how webmasters can prepare for it.

On the 12^th of March 2019, Google confirmed the first official update for 2019. As with the last updates confirmed by Google, this was a core update. Google named the update the “March 2019 Core Update”. Other confusing names such as “Florida 2 Update” had circulated within the Webmaster scene, and accordingly Google chose a distinct name for this new update. The current update, according to Google has nothing to do with the Florida update:

Seeing as this is another core update, Google’s recommendation on how to react to the update as a site operator has not changed from previous advice (see below, in the post).

According to the Google representative Danny Sullivan, this is already the third core update since Google started officially confirming major updates. It was announced worldwide, and the rollout should last about a week or more.

In mid-August, the Medic update, with its misleading name, caused a stir in the Google search results pages. Some websites lost up to 80% of their visibility. But where there are losers, there are also winners and it’s no different with Google. Many website operators were able to increase the visibility of their website tremendously.

Google merely stated that there would be an update, but the company didn’t reveal which changes had been made to the algorithm. The big mystery began when website operators tried to work out what had changed or what they could do if they had been affected. Further information can be found in the following section on the “Medic update”.

The new update happened around the 8^th of August 2018 and was simply called Medic update 2 in the industry (even though the name doesn’t really apply, it was retained for the sake of simplicity). With this update, Google seemed to partially reverse or reduce the changes that arose from the first Medic update.

As with the first Medic update, websites with sensitive topics (e.g. health topics, credit, insurance, etc.) were particularly affected. Interestingly, websites whose webmasters had not taken any decisive measures were also recovered. The Medic update 2 shows once again that Google does make mistakes and tries to undo them with further updates. As a webmaster, you shouldn’t just presume that this is going to happen though.

After the Medic update led to a few losers, but also some winners, the next smaller update confirmed by Google took place around the 29.09.2018. In the confirmation tweet from Danny Sullivan, he once again confirmed that the Google core algorithm is updated all the time. Even though Sullivan spoke about a “smaller” update, webmasters saw sharp movements in their website’s visibility index.

To set the record straight, the Medic update doesn’t live up to its name. However, it once again illustrates how difficult and misleading the external analysis of a Google update can be. The name “Medic update” comes from the SEO industry, which found out after the first few analyses that medical websites were especially affected by this Google update. But Google officially denied this theory by having webmaster trends analyst, Gary Illyes, announce on the stage of Search Masters Brasil that websites from the health sector in particular had been hit only by a “happy coincidence”. A few days earlier the official voice for Google, Danny Sullivan, confirmed that this update is a “broad core update”, which affects “all search queries”:

Even if the term “Medic update” is somewhat misleading, the presumption could apply to the update nevertheless: this applies in particular to websites where, among other things, the trust of the visitor plays an important role. Google summarises this criteria under the abbreviated EAT, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These three criteria are particularly relevant for websites with YMYL content, which stands for Your Money or Your Life, and includes websites that can influence the finances, health, satisfaction, or safety of the person surfing, due to the information they reveal.

If you are affected by the Medic update, you should check the official Google Quality Rater Guidelines. This internal guide is intended to give human Google Quality Raters some guidelines on how a perfect website should look and be built from Google’s point of view. When it comes to health topics, for example, it should be clear who the author of the article is and what professional qualifications they have.

The third core algorithm update in 2018 took place on 01.08.2018. Google officially confirmed on Twitter that this is a “broad core algorithm update”. At the same time, the tweet referred to the previous hints on how website operators should react to updates like these (have a look at the tweets further down in the article). Also the Google representative confirmed again on Twitter that the latest ranking shifts are a Google update. He referred to the following tweet:

In this Google update, Sullivan also reiterated that, in principle, website operators would be told about certain updates if they could change something specific. In this case, however, the site operator cannot change anything in particular to make up for any losses in ranking. Google wants to prevent webmasters from trying to “repair” things that aren’t broken.

He also stressed that the key to success is offering great content, but he also admitted that this time it was the “same boring answer” as it had been so many times before.

After a major core algorithm update in March of this year, Google also added more in April. The search engine operator announced via Twitter that on Monday 16.04.2018 that another major core algorithm update was released. For background information, the company referred to the tweet from the last Google update in March.

The last major Google update was on the 7^th of 2018. Via the official Twitter account @searchliaison, the search engine giant confirmed on 12^th March, that the assumptions of webmasters were true and that there had been a major update in the past few days:

This so-called core algorithm update is a major update that Google only carries out a few times a year in this form. The company is making a change right at its heart: the core of the Google algorithm. Accordingly, many websites are affected by core updates like these and the effects are noticeable and visible worldwide. Google remains silent about the exact changes that have been made. It is therefore almost impossible for website operators to react to this update. In another tweet about the March update, Google merely explains that previously undervalued websites are benefitting from the update. For all those disadvantaged by the update, who have been struggling with declining visitor numbers and reduced visibility since March 2018, Google has a message for them: nothing is wrong with these sites. There is also no “fix”, although you should focus on providing great content.

There is no official name for the update that happened on 07.03.2018, compared to updates of the past years.

In the Webmaster Hangout from 06.04.2018, John Mueller explained in concrete terms that the focus of the update was not so much the quality, but more the relevance. In order to increase the relevance of your own site, Mueller advises users to survey what could be done differently to improve the website. Also, you should always check the technical details, for example, whether the page can still be crawled by the Google bot.

What is the purpose of the Penguin update?

The Penguin update is often referred to as the webspam update since its name is the primary objective of the algorithm change, which is to stem the amount of spam in the search results in order to improve the relevance and quality of the results.

Google sees webspam as an unclean practice that is implemented to artificially improve the search engine ranking. A website that has only been optimised for the search engine and not for the user shouldn’t appear among the top search results, according to Google. The task of the Penguin is to identify unnatural site optimisation and curb any deliberate manipulation.