Google has confirmed that the July 2021 core update is now “effectively complete.” Google wrote on the Search Liaison Twitter account “the July 2021 core update rollout is now effectively complete.”
The announcement. Here is the tweet:
The July 2021 core update rollout is now effectively complete.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 12, 2021
July 2021 core update. Google started the July 2021 core update on July 1, 2021. This update took a twelve-days to rollout, whereas the sister update, the June 2021 core update only two ten-days to fully roll out.
July smaller than June. It seemed based on our analysis from several data providers that the July core update was smaller and less impactful than the June core update.
The facts. Google began rolling out the July 2021 core update at around noon on July 1, 2021. This update finished rolling out today, July 12th at around 1pm ET. The June 2021 core update, as we previously reported, started to roll out around 6:30pm ET on Wednesday, June 2nd. Like all core updates, this was a global update and was not specific to any region, language or category of web sites. It is a classic “broad core update” that Google releases every several months or so. The previous core update before the back-to-back June and July core update combo, was just shy of a six-month wait period, where the December 2020 core update took place on Dec. 3rd.
When was it felt. Based on what we’ve been tracking, it seems this July update was felt in a big way on July 2, 2021 and then again on July 9, 2021 and even possibly today, July 12, 2021. So if you saw big changes to your rankings between July 1 and July 12, 2021, espesially on July 2nd and 9th – it was likely related to this July 2021 core update.
Lots of ongoing updates. In the past month, we had about ten updates from Google and only three of those updates were not confirmed by Google. In the most recent order, we had the July 2021 core update, Google MUM rolled out this month, then the June 28 spam update, the June 23rd spam update, the Google page experience update, the Google predator algorithm update, the June 2021 core update and then a few unconfirmed updates.
Previous core updates. The most recent previous core update was the June 2021 core update and that update was slow to roll out but a big one. Then we had the December 2020 core update ands the December update was very big, bigger than the May 2020 core update, and that update was also big and broad and took a couple of weeks to fully roll out. Before that was the January 2020 core update, we had some analysis on that update over here. The one prior to that was the September 2019 core update. That update felt weaker to many SEOs and webmasters, as many said it didn’t have as big of an impact as previous core updates. Google also released an update in November, but that one was specific to local rankings. You can read more about past Google updates over here.
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. There aren’t specific actions to take to recover, and in fact, a negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages. However, Google has offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Google did say you can see a bit of a recovery between core updates but the biggest change you would see would be after another core update.
Why we care. Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google makes these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your web site or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm.
If your site saw any changes between July 1 and July 12, it was likely related to the July core update.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.