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Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, testified before congress not too long ago (as you may remember) and one thing that he said that stood out to me was that Google has over a thousand people working on core search. It wasn't clear if those were just engineers or it also included contractors, designers, Doodlers, etc. But he did specifically say "core search." At around 3 hours and 6 minutes into the testimony, a congressman asked Sundar Pichai how many staffers do they have working on search at Google. Sundar said "Congressman, today it is our search team, which works on core of our search team, and there is well over a thousand people."Here is the video embed that starts at the time he said it:I suspect this is just people on core search, but not just core ranking. Things like search quality, search ranking, snippets, indexing, crawling, etc etc. I do not know if he was including those who work on user interface design or not.But when Google says core search, my head goes to core … [Read more...] about Sundar Pichai: Google Has Over A Thousand People Working On Core Search

Google didn't like that the SEO community was going with the Florida 2 name, so they decided to tweet out that they are going to be calling it the "March 2019 Core Update." Can they do that? Google's Search Liaison account posted on Twitter: Google said they get it why it is useful to name some updates and they said "our name for this update is March 2019 Core Update." Why did they name it this? They said they "think this helps avoid confusion; it tells you the type of update it was and when it happened."Can they renamed updates given by the SEO community? Well, they did it with the Panda update - we originally called it the Farmer update and they renamed it to Panda.The Panda update targeted content farms, so early on the community named it the farmer update. Google then changed the name to the Panda update.If you ask anyone if they heard of the Farmer update - they'd most likely say no. But I'd be surprised if any SEO didn't hear of the Panda update.Here is more from Danny on the … [Read more...] about Google Names The 3/12 Update The “March 2019 Core Update”

The March 2019 Google Core update that touched down on March 12th - we covered it before it was confirmed - is still very raw and fresh. So most of you know, when reading some of the early speculation and advice around this update - you need to be very skeptical. I just wanted to share what people are saying so you have it but be skeptical. I am seeing people call this a reversal of the Medic update - which Google would probably now rename to the August 2019 Core Update. :) Some are saying this is Penguin or Panda related. Some say this is purely link related. We got EAT and YMYL and some are saying other things. The theories are floating all over the place now. It will take weeks or so to review this update and see the true impact - heck it did not even fully roll out yet.WebmasterWorld forums has a lot of speculation around it:Biggest impact since EAT update. Something is going on with EAT.I think google made huge adjustments in the medicine sector.In my opionion this update is … [Read more...] about Speculation Around The Google March 2019 Core Update

There is no doubt that the Google March 2019 Core Update that touched down on March 12th was a big one. So just like the last big core update, which we named the Medic update, from August 1st, we want to collect data and analyze that data to try to find some pattern.Right now, all we have is speculation about this update - if we can get hundreds of responses, maybe we can find a patten to share with you.It is important to check your analytics, Google Search Console, ranking data, etc and see how your sites were impacted on or after March 12th. That is when you may or may not see changes, negative or positive changes. That being said - please take the survey over here or below and ask your friends, colleagues, co-workers fill it out individually for each site impacted. This is exactly the same survey I posted at Search Engine Land by the way.We will share the results with all of you.Survey:Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld. … [Read more...] about Survey: Tell Us How You Were Impacted By The Google March 2019 Core Update

There is a lot of speculation around the March 2019 core update that started on March 12th that it reversed what the Medic update did on August 1, 2018. While many sites did see gains after dropping from the August 1st update, many did not.I would not call this a reversal - I would call this an update to the Google core ranking algorithm and thus, with any one who got hit on previously passed core updates, some may see their rankings improve, some may see nothing and some may see it get worse. That is exactly what we have been seeing.In fact, the survey results (please take our survey over here) now have over 330 responses and I went back to a lot of those that got hit by the Medic Update and asked them if they recovered. Less than 60% said they saw a recovery:When I asked Google if this was a reversal, they didn't say it was. They just said "We're constantly improving our algorithms and build forward to improve." So yea, they didn't reverse anything specific, just continued to … [Read more...] about Google March 2019 Core Update Had Many Reversals But It Was Not A Reversal