On September 29, It was confirmed by Google that it made a “small” algorithm update to its search ranking system last week.
Danny Sullivan from Google said on Twitter “We haven’t had a major update of that nature, but we did have a smaller one this week.”
Our core algorithm is updated all the time. For major updates, we’ll continue to share about those on @searchliaison, as we have been. We haven’t had a major update of that nature, but we did have a smaller one this week.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 29, 2018
On September, there was some chatter and rumors of an update that touched down. If you noticed anything happen with your rankings and Google traffic this last week, there’s the chance it was due to this “smaller” update.
Google will routinely update its search ranking algorithm to provide the most relevant and useful search results. There may be times when these updates impact a larger percentage of sites. There times where they will also impact a smaller percent of sites. According to Google, this algorithmic update was on the smaller scale.
It’s still unclear as to what was impacted. Google didn’t say or who or what types of sites were impacted. Google didn’t provide any additional clarity past saying it did a smaller update last week.
If you took a hit and your rankings suffered, then previous Google advice has been to just keep working on making your site better. Google’s previous advice was:
Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year.
As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded.
There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.