What Changes With Each Algorithm Update

Our team at Ventura Web Design & Marketing is dedicated to keeping your website up to date. We actively research algorithm updates when they are released and analyze your website to see which changes are necessary.

Below is a guide to each Google algorithm update beginning in 2020. Bookmark this page or check back frequently as we continuously add updates.

January

February

March

JANUARY 2020

January 2020 Core Update

Estimated Rollout: January 13, 2020

What changed?

The January 2020 Core Update was announced, per Google’s new initiative beginning in 2019 to be more transparent with their algorithm updates. They’ve aimed to announce updates before rolling them out, and so far this seems to be true.

The update, according to Google, was a broad initiative to better ensure quality content for people seeking information.  This means Google continues to push content creators and websites to evaluate what they’re publishing in order to give people the best “answer” possible when searching.

Some SERP layout changes were included in the update as well. Google decided to include a website’s favicon next to its result, and display the site’s breadcrumbs in lieu of the specific URL. For example, instead of https://www.venturawebdesign.com/responsive-vs-mobile-website-design/ appearing just above the meta description, this displays:

What does this mean?

It’s up to specialists to look at the data and adjust where necessary. Google has indicated that a drop in rankings following this update isn’t necessarily a penalty, per se. But rather a drop in rankings indicates that your information isn’t meeting certain standards as well as it used to according to previous standards.

You will need to evaluate your content and update it to ensure it’s high-quality and providing value to whoever is reading it. This includes showing you are a trustworthy source, proofing your content, presenting your information in a readable and useable way, and more.

Favicon Update

Estimated Rollout: January 24, 2020

What Changed?

Remember the favicon update on January 13? Google rolled this back so favicons no longer show up in the SERPs.

Snippet & Deduplication Update

Estimated Rollout: January 22, 2020

What changed?

Featured snippets that were once known as position zero are now included in the main organic search results and known as position one. URLs for the snippets are no longer displayed (i.e. duplicated) anywhere else in the core search results. For example, if a website held positions zero and one for an article, following the update they’ll only hold position one.

This update also included changes to whether images are deduplicated. Images aren’t impacted by this as long as the URL for the image is different from the URL associated with the text of the snippet.

What does this mean?

The purpose of this update, according to Google, is to declutter the search results page so that people aren’t seeing multiple the same information more than once.

Website owners can choose to alter their SEO strategy accordingly. For example, depending on the strategy, snippets can be opted out of. This would mean that websites would be competing for position 2, instead of positions zero or one prior to the update. This can be done primarily by using the “nosnippet” tag.

Be sure to carefully consider your online strategy before making drastic changes. It’s recommended you discuss this change with a specialist to avoid making mistakes that could penalize you on the Google search result pages.

FEBRUARY 2020

Unconfirmed Local & Maps Update

Estimated Rollout: February 14, 2020

What changed?

Neither officially announced nor confirmed by Google, many websites experienced movement in rankings and traffic fluctuations during/after February 14. Most of these changes impacted local SEO in Google Maps and Google local packs.

What does this mean?

It’s speculated that the unofficial February 14 update was an adjustment to the January 2020 Core Update. Many SEOs sat with the local update for a few days in order to make changes once the dust settled.

MARCH 2020

Nofollow Update

Estimated Rollout: March 1, 2020

What changed?

Prior to the March 1 update, Google treated nofollow tags as law. Nofollow links weren’t crawled, however, that’s changed. Now, nofollow tags are mere suggestions and there’s a possibility Google will visit those links.

What does this mean?

You may want to review how you’ve set up your website to be indexed. Nofollow tags are sometimes used to prevent crawlers from looking at account pages or pages without value to visitors. However, maybe a noindex or meta norobots tag would be more appropriate for your purposes. This change may impact rankings depending on what Google crawls and indexes moving forward.