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Hope you all had a nice July 4th weekend, here is the July 2022 Google webmaster report to catch you up on the past month. We had two confirmed algorithm updates this past month and many unconfirmed. We also had changes to Search Console, SEO documentation updates, local and maps features and tons of user interfaces.

Google Search has added new content guidelines to the rich results help document. These new guidelines directly disallow you to markup product or content that are widely prohibited or regulated, or that can facilitate serious harm to self or others. Google said it will simply not show rich results on such products.

After maybe four or five days of calm, we are seeing new signs of more larger Google Search ranking algorithm tremors and volatility. This new one seems to just be kicking off, some of the tracking tools are already picking up on it and we have chatter from within the SEO community about a possible update on June 27th and today, June 28th.

We have been watching what I named the Google Juneteenth Search Ranking Algorithm tremors since the weekend and it is now spiking even more this morning. Seems like some sites hit by the May 2022 core update are seeing some big recoveries, many are not, and sites in general are reporting on big swings in the Google search results.

I know we had a long Holiday weekend with both Father's Day and Juneteenth but there were some tremors of note related to a possible Google search ranking algorithm update over the weekend. It might be just normal holiday weekend chatter but some of the tools are also showing volatility that match the chatter.

(This is a personal post so if that isn’t your thing then you should move on.)

This is the tenth year that I’ve done a year in review piece. You might benefit from and find yourself in prior year versions. Here are easy links to 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

The timing of this post, half way through the next year, should be a clue that 2021 was a difficult one.

Lack of Control

I didn’t escape the pandemic unscathed.

I, personally, didn’t find the...

As you remember, the Google May 2022 core update officially started on May 25th and officially ended on June 9th. But like we said initially, we felt it started or was being tested, before May 25th and now, it seems like there are more tremors, big tremors, for some sites days after this core update was announced as done rolling out.

Google has announced this morning at 3:44am ET that the May 2022 broad core update is now done rolling out. Google said "The May 2022 core update rollout is now complete." This comes a day after noticing a lot of volatility, so maybe today we will see much less volatility and things to start calming down.

Today is officially day 14 since the May 2022 core update first started rolling out and it does not seem to be done rolling out yet - it is not complete. Google's Danny Sullivan said last night "We're not there yet." I asked Google's John Mueller this morning and he didn't say it was done yet.

Google's May 2022 core update is now just about 13 days in, we expect Google to say the update is now rolling out sometime in the next 72 hours or so. But till then, it does seem like the tremors have continued, with big spikes on Sunday, June 5, 2022.