Google’s recent core algorithm update and product review update are done rolling out as of September 26, 2022, the company confirms.
Google quietly announced the rollout completion via its search ranking updates page.
Screenshot from: developers.google.com/search/updates/ranking, September 2022.
The September 2022 core update started rolling out two weeks ago, on September 12. The product review update launched a week later, on September 20.
Both updates finish rolling out on the same day, September 26, which is ideal if you eagerly await to assess their impact.
What To Do Next
Now it’s time to assess the impact of the updates by analyzing your website’s rankings and traffic patterns.
If you notice any significant and sustained changes, they’re likely the result of one or both updates.
How To Tell If You’re Impacted By The Core Update
Google applies core updates across all search results, and they have the potential to affect entire sites.
Google Search Advocate, John Mueller, explains how core updates target the whole site rather than specific elements:
“With the core updates we don’t focus so much on just individual issues, but rather the relevance of the website overall.
And that can include things like the usability, and the ads on a page, but it’s essentially the website overall.”
With that in mind, changes to search rankings across a majority of your website’s pages indicate the core update impacted you.
How To Tell If You’re Impacted By The Product Review Update
This one is more straightforward, as product review updates are only applied to search results for product reviews.
Do you publish product reviews? If not, then you weren’t impacted by the update.
If you do publish product reviews, pay careful to rankings. If you notice changes that are limited to product review pages, it’s likely because of the product review update.
On the other hand, ranking changes across your entire site are more likely the result of the core update.
Stay tuned for follow-up articles as we analyze the impact of these updates.
Source: Google
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