On June 3rd 2019, Google SearchLiason via Twitter announced that there would be a broad core Google June 2019 algorithm update, which was unusual for the search engine to announce an update beforehand. This algorithm update impacts how sites are ranked within their natural search engine results.

What was the Google June 2019 Algorithm update?

Unfortunately, Google does not announce what exactly changed, who will be impacted, or how to adapt for the change. They just give everyone the notice that things have changed and to look out.

We know that this is a “broad core algorithm change”, meaning something in the fundamentals of the algorithm were updated. There are daily updates, but those are smaller tweaks than a broad core change like this (thing of it as replacing your old coffee mug vs a kitchen renovation).

Additionally, to further cloud things, Google also released a Site Diversity update right around the same time. The problem that this causes is that it becomes very hard to pinpoint what change happened in the algorithm.

However, there are two major pieces we can look at; historical data and Google’s push on quality content.

First, we know that Google has had two broad core updates as follows before this Google June 2019 Algorithm Update:

• August 2018 “Medic” Core Algorithm Update – Mostly affected medial related sites (whether the majority of these sites are medical is questionable based on your definition of medical).
• March 2019 Core Algorithm Update – Based on movement across various sites and industries, it was believed that this was a reversal of the Medic Update.

Second, we know that Google focuses on the user experience and quality content. In fact, they cannot say enough about it:

So while they don’t give us the details of what change occurred we believe that you should heed the warning and focus on good, quality content (makes sense and we agree… F spammy sites).

How can you fix your site after the update?

There is no immediate quick fix.

One thing that Google keeps pushing, as we have since day 1, is to focus on QUALITY and CONTENT. People visit sites because they want to have a good experience and find what they are looking for. The more you focus on this, the more rewarded you will be.

As we have seen in the past, typically it will take 2-3 weeks for updates to fully “mature” and show what effect they have. So far, it has been positive for us and some of our clients (which is interesting, because we saw an initial drop in our own site’s visibility, then rebound the past week):

Client 1

Client 2

FirestormSEM.com

Are there exceptions?

Funny though with all these updates and the repeated push for quality content and how spammy backlinks are bad, we have been following a site that has all the things that Google says not to do, and look at the benefit they see every time an algorithm update hits (Aug 2018, Mar 2019, Jun 2019)…

Their organic traffic in June 2019 was 55k, up from 43k in May and they are not a seasonal business.

Their top referring sites, according to AHREFS.com, are sites like http://xljgs.com/. So we have a hard time figuring out why those that spend so little time building spam and garbage are rewarded over those that spend hours building “great content”.

But despite this, we still focus on building brands and businesses, which involves building awareness through great content, creating highly engaging and authoritative sites, and trust with users. Whether Google rewards us as much as a spam site is up for debate.

Please add any updates you are seeing. We will update this page as we gather more information.