Google Updates 2019

After all ups and downs, we have successfully completed the 2019 year in regards to Google updates in 2019. Even after many major Google updates, 2019, very few websites got hit by Google; they might be working for users is the reason. We have seen lots of changes in Google in order to improve the search results. Google made several changes but here, you are going to find the top major Changes/Google Updates which happened last year, 2019.

March 2019 Core Update (aka Florida 2 Core Algo Update)

March 12, 2019

This was the very first major update which happened in March 2019. Google regularly updates the Google Core Update 3-4 times a year. So, it was the first one for that year. 

What were the major changes in Google after this Google Core update?

There were lots of discussions going on amongst the SEOs after the release of this update. As there was no name for this update till then, it was difficult to find out its impact on Google’s SERP. 

Later Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison named it “march 2019 Core Update” in a tweet. 

We understand it can be useful to some for updates to have names. Our name for this update is "March 2019 Core Update." We think this helps avoid confusion; it tells you the type of update it was and when it happened.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) March 15, 2019

The Highlighted Point – 

• Behaves like a rollback of previous updates.
• Aggressive spidering by GoogleBot
• All countries are affected
• Most affected categories so far are Autos Vehicles, Health, and Pets Animals

Read More – March 2019 Core Update  

Google De-indexing Issue

The issue arises when many Webmasters started to see the drop-down in their Google Webmaster data. Actually, this was because of some errors made by tools (as assumed before Mr. Pete tweet).

No hard evidence either way yet, but a multi-day indexing bug could certainly (in theory) cause the SERP flux we're seeing. While not an "algorithm change" in the traditional sense, it's certainly a ranking change.

— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) April 8, 2019

The pages were dropping from the Google Index. Almost all websites were affected. The pages were not coming in Google at any place for most of the websites. 

This all happened because of some bug in the Google index. So, after all, there was nothing from the Google end intensely, it was a bug that hampers all indexed websites.  

The Highlighted Point – 

• Google De Indexed Millions of Pages
• It Called it “Bug”
• It Fixed the Issue and Gain What Were be Loose
• Not Major Impact on Google Ranking for a Long Time

Read More – Google Algorithm Update Tools False Alarm?

Domain Diversity Update

June 7, 2019

Have you ever done a search and gotten many listings all from the same site in the top results? We've heard your feedback about this and wanting more variety. A new change now launching in Google Search is designed to provide more site diversity in our results….

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 6, 2019

Amongst all Google updates 2019 (happened in 2019), The Domain Diversity Update was one of the most important updates. The marketers and SEOs have been continuously asking for such updates or algorithms.

This Google Update was all about showing the more diverse, different and unique search results to users. As earlier or still, you may find several listings from a single domain for a query. In this scenario, many listings were getting several places in top results while some deserving listings were not anywhere.

What Now?

With the help of this Google update, Google Search is trying to show more unique results in the top searches. Now, it will not show more than 2 listings from the same domain. Google SearchLiaison further added that we may still get more than 2 listings for some domain if its system found it unique in some way.

Is it going to consider the results from Root-domain & Subdomain Results differently?

No. If we were getting 2-2 results from root domain and sub-domain respectively. After releasing this Google Update, we will get only 2 results (2 from any domain or 1 from each domain)

The Highlighted Point –

• The marketers and SEOs were demanding such type of update for a long time
• Now, we will see the maximum 2 results from the same domain
• Google may show you more than 2 results if it finds it relevant 
• Root-domain and Subdomain results will be considered from the same domain
• The other listings will get space in the top search 

Read More- Google search update aims to show more diverse results from different domain names

Pre-Announced Google Core Update

Tomorrow, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the June 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this tweet for more about that:https://t.co/tmfQkhdjPL

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 2, 2019

One more Google Core Update. This one is the 2nd Google Core Update after the previous one happened in March 2019. I think this is the first time Google pre-announced before it’s been rolling out. Danny Sullivan stated that they just wanted to be more proactive and marketers will be known about the update and don’t feel puzzled.

Google usually rolls out the core updates several times in a single year. For 2019, this was the 2nd one. So, as always nothing special. It was just another Google Core Update that rolls out to improve the search result.

Read More- Google pre-announces June 2019 core search algorithm update

Google Update to Reduce Adult Content

Google has tried made little bit changes in its Google Search Algorithm in regards to showing adult content. Now, after the update, Google is going to show less adult or porn content for the searches as “School Girl”, “Teens” and more. 

So, there was nothing to worry about the other industry. It may have helped several websites for Schools, Student activities, NGOs working for Girl child and more. 

Read More – Google Search Algorithm Tweaked To Show Less Porn For Lesbian, Teen & Other Queries

Google Issue with Indexing New Content

Again indexing issue in Google after the Google De-Indexing Issue in March 2019. It affected every new content but this time the News websites have been hampered mostly as they do publish the news every 15 mins (averagely). 

This was a technical issue from the Google side. There is nothing to worry about. The issue has been resolved by Google as Google confirmed.

Read More- [Update: Resolved]- Google Indexing Bug Seems To Be Recovering

Pre-Announced Google Core Update

Google again pre-announced the Google Core Update in September. Earlier they pre-announced the same Google Core Update in March 2019. 

The question is – Why are they pre-announcing from the last 2 updates? Is something big going to happen? 

Google on Twitter “Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the September 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog for more about that.”

Find the same tweet below:

Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the September 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog for more about that: https://t.co/e5ZQUAlt0G

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) September 24, 2019

There were lots of websites that were hit by this update but yes, there were some improvements also seen in some websites.

Read More – Google To Release September 2019 Core Update Later Today

Google Reduces the Number of Reviews in SERP

This is big! 

Why does Google want to hide or minimize Google reviews? 

This update will help Google to hide or minimize the google reviews in search snippets. Now Google is going to show the review snippets from the selected schema types. By doing this, Google wants to remove misleading reviews and make it more meaningful. 

The Schemas Google Will Accept For Reviews

We can have several types of reviews and we can create those reviews with the help of different Schemas. Find the following Schemas which Google is going to accept and will show the reviews in search results – 

• schema.org/Book
• schema.org/Course
• schema.org/CreativeWorkSeason
• schema.org/CreativeWorkSeries
• schema.org/Episode
• schema.org/Event
• schema.org/Game
• schema.org/HowTo
• schema.org/LocalBusiness
• schema.org/MediaObject
• schema.org/Movie
• schema.org/MusicPlaylist
• schema.org/MusicRecording
• schema.org/Organization
• schema.org/Product
• schema.org/Recipe
• schema.org/SoftwareApplication

Read More – Making Review Rich Results more helpful

Change in the Nofollow Links Treatment

Google has announced some important changes in using the NoFollow attribute. Google introduces 2 new NoFollow Attributes – 

• Nofollow Attribute For User Generated Content
• Nofollow Attribute For Sponsored Content

Before releasing this update, there was only one NoFollow Attribute being used for all non-trusted links i.e. rel=”Nofollow”.

Now, we can use 3 different Nofollow attributes – 

• rel=”sponsored” – Use for paid and sponsored links.
• rel=”ugc” – Use for user-generated content such as comments, reviews and more.
• rel=”Nofollow” – Use for Non-trusted links.

Google posted – 

“All the link attributes, sponsored, ugc and nofollow, now work today as hints for us to incorporate for ranking purposes.”

It is big. Now, Google will treat UGC nofollow links as hints for ranking purpose. It means now Google may crawl the links with NoFollow attributes. The NoFollow attribute was not used for crawling and indexing (Google didn’t follow them) and so Google didn’t use them for ranking hints. 

The Highlighted Point –

• Google announced 3 different Nofollow attributes. 
  1. rel=”sponsored”
  2. rel=”ugc”
  3. rel=”Nofollow”
• Post these changes, Google may use all Nofollow attributes as a ranking hint.
• We can use the attributes in combination with one another i.e. rel=”Nofollow sponsored”, rel=”nofollow ugc” and so on.
• As per Google recommendations, the webmasters should mark the paid and affiliate links with “nofollow” or “sponsored” attributes
• Means by working on UGC one can generate the backlink which may be crawled by Google
• Google can track how many websites/person is indulging in Paid linking/promotion on 3rd party website
• One question – Would Google like to target those who are paying for a link, for PPC?

Read More – Google Nofollow Links Ranking Change – How it Affects SEO

Google BERT Update

What is BERT?

BERT is the acronym for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. Basically, it is designed to understand the intent behind the search queries. 

It has the capability to understand the full context of each word in search queries. It also understands the meaning of whole queries by looking at the words that come before and after it.

Why is BERT?

As we know, Google always tries to improve its search results. With the same aim, Google keeps changing or bringing new things.

This time Google wants to understand the queries in a better way so that it could provide the most relevant results to the users.

Google also stated that it wants to understand the Queries better than ever before.

It is a neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP)called BERT. This technology enables anyone to train their own state-of-the-art question answering system.

Google also said that it is extending the BERT method to more languages so that it could help the other people who don’t understand/search in English.

Google is also going to use the BERT for featured snippets too. 

The Highlighted Point –

• BERT will help Google to understand the context (not meaning) behind the queries.
• It will help Google to understand queries like humans rather than robots.
• Marketers don’t need to change anything if you are already writing for users.
• BERT will help to understand the prepositions like “to”, “for”, “of” etc.
• In the very beginning, it is limited to US English searches only. It will be expanding to the other local languages too.
• It is going to impact the featured snippets too.

Read More – Google BERT Update Impacts 10% Queries & Has Been Rolling Out All Week

November 2019 Google Local Update

Again one more step from Google to understand the meaning behind queries in a better way and improve the search result.

Now Google is going to use the Neural Matching method for local searches too. By implementing this method, Google is trying to improve the results for local searches too.

What is the Neural matching method?

As Google stated in another tweet, “Neural matching is an AI-based system Google began using in 2018 primarily to understand how words are related to concepts. It’s like a super-synonym system. Synonyms are words that are closely related to other words.”

An example by Google, neural matching helps us understand that a search for “why does my TV look strange” is related to the concept of “the soap opera effect.” We can then return pages about the soap opera effect, even if the exact words aren’t used…

The marketers need not do anything in regards to this update. Yes, if you are going to lose the ranking; need to introspect your business listings a

In early November, we began making use of neural matching as part of the process of generating local search results. Neural matching allows us to better understand how words are related to concepts, as explained more here: https://t.co/ShQm7g9CvN

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 2, 2019

Read More – Google Has Confirmed The November 2019 Google Local Update

Hope you have enjoyed this blog. Kindly comment if these Google updates in 2019 had hit you and also let us know – what did you do for recovery. It will be good to share your experience with the readers. 

Also Read – Google Updates 2017