Industry News

There were some signs of a possible Google search ranking algorithm update that touched down on October 6th, spiked a bit more on October 7th and is fizzling out today, October 8th. The tools are not as insane as with this past weekends update but there is more chatter this time around.

Google's John Mueller posted a cryptic tweets this morning with a dark photo with the date, October 6, 2021 imprinted on an object. John's tweet says "A system of sites interlinked." To me, this says Google has claimed interlinked sites as a link strategy as dead as of October 6th - but John did not say much more.

This month, we had the big Google Search On event where Google touted how it will be using MUM in more places in Google Search, plus a bunch of other big announcements, so check that out. We also had several unconfirmed Google Search algorithm updates this past month. Google tweaked the title change to show your title tags more often but is it enough? Google said that it is moving away from talking about 200+ ranking signals going forward.

I know I sound like a broken record but yet again, we have another unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update over the weekend. This one is off the charts, huge, massive, and all those fun adjectives, according to the tracking tools. The weekend chatter is not matching up with what the tools are showing, not yet at least.

Google had a slew of Google Search related announcements at the Google Search On 2021 event. The announcements ranged from improvements and more uses for MUM, to the about this result expanding, to shoppable search experiences, in-store inventory, Google Lens updates and a bunch of features and redesigns to the Google Search experience.

Once again, there may have been yet another Google search ranking algorithm update this past weekend. This is unconfirmed still but it seems like a very big update based on the tracking tools and some of the comments I saw from the community.

There is a ton to pack into Google Ads announcement that they named "matching the most relevant keyword to every search." There is a change to both phrase and broad match keywords when they match are handled, what happens when they are not identical and how Google uses BERT to better match keywords to queries.

While I was offline, Google had a super long delay and a bunch of issues with Google Search Console and some of the reporting. Well, now that I am back, it seems to be coming back to normal. In fact, John Mueller of Google said this morning it might come back to normal later today.

We may have had another Google search ranking algorithm update this past Thursday and Friday - over Yom Kippur day and Friday. The chatter was somewhat limited but there is chatter and the tools mostly show signs of a small update on the 16th and 17th of September.

I've been asking Google for a month now how big of a change was the title change - where did it go from and to? Well, Google did tell us it uses HTML title tags 80% of the time but it didn't tell us what that number was before. Now Google changed it to use it 87% of the time. What was it before the change, I am not sure.