The May Google Core Update and the first findings
The May Google Core Update and the first findings on the necessary changes
Google Core Update May 2020 – Get to the heart of the matter!
The Google Core Update of May 2020 provides initial insights into the impact on websites and online shops. However, some criteria that have changed during the current Core Update can already be seen. Besides the re-evaluation of links, the topics trust, authority and competence play a major role in this Core Update. The so-called E-A-T factor played a big role from now on.
Who are the winners and who are the losers of the update?
It is clearly visible that websites and online shops with high quality content and detailed product descriptions have gained significantly in rankings and lost static pages. In the so-called YMYL area, which involves websites with medical or monetary content, this result has an even greater impact.
Those affected by the current core update have little chance of making amends in the coming weeks. However, you can always do something about your ranking if you take Google’s quality standards into account. Since the Panda Update 2012, the quality of websites has become much more important and therefore you should ask visitors of your own website the following questions:
Further important questions:
Does the website have spelling mistakes or stylistic flaws?
Is the content written more for people or for search engines?
Does the website offer new information backed up with facts?
Does the website offer real added value when compared to other search hits?
Has the site been qualitatively checked and does the content reflect this?
Has the content been viewed from different angles and does the content reflect this?
What is the E-A-T factor?
The E-A-T Factor stands for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. Here, contributions on websites are re-evaluated with regard to these criteria and the connection between author and contribution content is assessed. Since the Medic Updates in 2018, several Core Updates have followed one after the other, which were rolled out with an interval of a few months.
One year after the rollout, Google has officially confirmed that the E-A-T factor influences the ranking of websites. The origin of this change can certainly be seen in the fact that over the years many requests have come from the medical or legal sector. Therefore Google wants to use new evaluation criteria for these very important everyday topics. Currently, we have had an extremely high number on the topic of corona virus in the past few months, and numerous websites have also deliberately disseminated misinformation.
If you look at the changes on some websites, you can see that the ratings of real users can be better interpreted and fake ratings are devaluated. Furthermore, it seems that Google can understand more and more complex search queries, and last year’s Bert Update has contributed a lot to this.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask yourself:
Do you have confidence in the information you found on the website?
Can the website load quickly?
Does the website have SSL encryption?
Does the author of the offered content have expertise or rather not?
Does the website have multiple articles on the same topic?
Could you imagine to deposit your credit card data on the website?
You should also ask yourself questions:
Is the content of the website of editorially checked quality or does it rather show bad quality?
If it is about health issues, would you trust the content of this site?
Is the website among those you would consider a site with high authority?
Is the content on the website treated down to the last detail?
Does the website and its content offer other useful additions to the topics beyond the normal information content?
Would you share the contents of the website with others if they were interested in the same topic?
Does the advertising on the website bother you or is it still in the frame?
Is the content of the website so good that it could be published elsewhere, e.g. in printed form?
Are there reasons for visitors to the website to complain?