Major Google Updates so far in 2019

Google tweaks its algorithm daily, but also announces major changes several times a year.

As we head to the mid-point of 2019, it’s time to look back at the big updates to organic search, what we know about them, and what actions you might want to take.

Florida 2 update (early March)

Google is calling this the March 2019 Core Update, but the name Florida 2 seems to be sticking with the SEO community.  

As this is a core update, it does not focus on one particular set of ranking factors, and on no particular niche.

It seems to have affected any kind of site with slow speeds, poor trust signals and low-quality content. It Is similar to the YMYL update from last year but expands that to the whole web.

Google’s E-A-T guidelines of expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness are key to coping here, as they will be for any core update going forward.

Core Update (early June)

Google announced yet another core update at the beginning of June, and the SEO community is still in the process of digesting it.

This is another broad update (not focused on any one ranking factor or niche) – and Google claims you can’t do anything to fix your site for this update.

John Muller did let the cat out of the bag a little bit when he said sites should look more at trustworthiness, and then referred webmasters to a Google blog post from 2011 on quality guidelines.

Basically, it looks like more of the same thing as the Florida update in March.

Interestingly, the first big site to report a problem in rankings was the Daily Mail in the UK. It seems that devoting half your front page to celebrity gossip, (and the other half to video banner ads) isn’t a great recipe for scoring well on Google. Well, we already knew that, but it’s nice to see big media sites finally getting punished for this as well as the little guys.

Cora developer Ted Kubaitis revealed on the SEO Fight Club YouTube channel that his test websites which have not had any on-page optimization done in years suddenly lost rankings. He also said they haven’t had any backlinks built to them in a long time – suggesting that this an on-page update, and probably not related to your backlink profile.

What do the March and June core updates mean for SEO in 2019? It’s the usual message that Google has been preaching for years – optimize your on-site SEO as best you can and try to be as authoritative and trustworthy as possible.

Most iGaming affiliates won’t want to add author data to their casino reviews – but those who are brave enough to do it might see a boost.

Site Diversity Update (early June)

This one hit the SERPs around the same time as the core update but seems to be a separate change.

According to an announcement from Google’s Danny Sullivan, this change tries to limit any one site from having more than two results in any one SERP.

So far it seems to be mostly aimed at big aggregator sites like Amazon or Trip Advisor, as well as local sites such as Indiamart and Zomato.

Branded queries seem to be largely exempt from this change, which makes sense. If a user searches for “Mr. Green contact details” then you would expect the mrgreen.com site to dominate the front page – and it still does.

In fact, a study from Peter J Meyers on Moz suggests that this update has had very little change across the web as a whole. Even searching for “pure green coffee extract” still shows 5 Amazon links in the top 10 results.

So, it seems that Google might still have some work to do here. Or maybe smaller affiliate/informational sites just need to raise their SEO game.

So far, the iGaming niche seems to be largely unaffected by this change. But then again, there were never any big aggregator sites which ever dominated the sportsbook and casino queries.

But if you are a smaller player in the eCommerce or travel verticals, then this will be a welcome change and could lead to real opportunities to break onto Page 1 – especially if Google rolls out further diversity changes.

And that’s it. I will report back at the end of the year about what else Google has been changing.