Google has officially confirmed that there has been an update of the Google Core algorithm this week. The signs for an update of the Google algorithm were already clearly noticeable.

Via Twitter, the company announced that it was updating the core algorithm several times a year, as was previously the case. However, the current update has a direct effect on the rankings and also the traffic of websites in the SERPs and can be felt much more clearly than previous innovations in the Google algorithm. It is currently difficult to say exactly which changes are taking place. These can only be evaluated retrospectively by the visible ranking shifts of affected sites. As usual, it will probably take a few days to see the full range of effects.

Updates like this can take 1-2 weeks to go through and it is best to remain patient and wait for rankings to stabilize in new positions. Also, they recommend you postpone major changes to your website until the update has gone through. Right now, Google is trying to figure out where it wants to rank everything with the new algorithm in place and it is certainly safer not to mess the search engine up by changing something significant on your website.

In the spring of this year there were already two updates of the Google Core algorithm. Google has announced that their comments on this update remain the same as on the first two. Google emphasized in particular that websites that have suffered damage as a result of the update – for example, those that have deteriorated in their ranking – cannot be repaired. The claim should be much more that the websites can improve themselves and thus work their way up in the ranking again.

While it is normal for rankings to change over and over again, the number of reports from affected webmasters that have accumulated within a short period of time suggests this update is rather intense.

The well-known SEO trackers also show a lot of movement. In my experience, the best tools that capture fluctuations are  Mozcast and the Grump Rating.

In order, this is how the two signal trackers evaluate the situation:

It is clear from these results that some big shifts are taking place in the search results. And it is also visible that some of the chatter from July was also correct. Many people have reported changes around the 21st of July, which MozCast has indeed captured. There may have been an a smaller but related update on this date.

Why it doesn’t matter in the best case

Google is always working on its ranking algorithm. It now resembles a cat and mouse game between the search engine and the SEO community. Given the unchanged rules for good content, most website owners do not have to make any changes at all. Such updates to the algorithm are usually aimed at implementing the content quality requirements that Google has been preaching for years.

How the update of the algorithm affects the SERPs will be known 1-2 weeks from now. My contact at SEO Hamburg also say that Google usually readjusts details after a major updates. It is therefore important for website owners not to take changes too seriously yet, as things can still change later. It would be particularly hasty now to draw conclusions on SEO strategy changes from the current figures.

Google employee Danny Sullivan advises site operators instead to look at the overall picture of their site and take care of good content. As always in recent times, there is officially nothing broken with websites that have lost rankings, and there is apparently no way to fix anything. It is strange that we are left in the dark like this. At least with Google Panda and Penguin, we understand what was happening and why, and people were able to implement much cleaner strategies for search engine optimization. I believe that knowing and understanding what needs to be done ultimately leads to better websites.

Hardly any SEO topic has been discussed as long as Google’s conversion to the Mobile First index. Logically, it also came to ambiguities. This Google finally clears up in a series of tweets.

Confused by the Mobile First index? Don’t worry – so are others. Google now took the frequent misunderstandings surrounding the index conversion as an opportunity to shed light with a series of service tweets.

Mobile Friendliness is not a prerequisite for the index

Neither mobile-friendliness nor a responsive design are prerequisites to be moved into the Mobile-First-Index. Pages without a mobile version will continue to work in mobile use and can also be used for indexing.

Speed update independent of the Mobile First index

The speed update announced for July is independent of Mobile First indexing. Of course, fast pages are better for mobile users, but both updates are not directly related.

Crawling numbers

According to Google, the number of crawled URLs per day will not change. It simply shifts the ratio of the crawled URL from desktop URL to mobile URL. When moving pages to the Mobile First index, there may be a crawling increase at the beginning, since everything is indexed anew.

URL in the Mobile First Index

If you use a separate mobile and desktop URL, Google Desktop will display the desktop URL and mobile users the mobile URL. In both cases, however, only the content of the mobile URL is indexed. If your pages are created with a single URL for mobile and desktop (Responsive Design), you don’t have to worry about that.

Cache bug

Currently there is a bug regarding cached pages: For many mobile-first-indexed pages, no cached page is displayed. Google emphasizes that this is only a bug in the user interface and does not affect crawling, indexing and ranking of pages.

Mobile-friendly user interfaces

To make menus pleasant for smartphone users, hamburger and accordion menus are absolutely fine.

No automatic ranking boost

The Mobile First index does not generally change the ranking, except that the mobile content is used as a basis. Mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor for mobile devices, but moving into the Mobile-First-Index is not.

Who wants to know more about the Mobile First index can find extensive documentations on the Webmaster blog of Google.