SEO News: Google’s July 2021 Core Update Completed

Google’s July Core Update is now completed.

Google announced the start of the rollout on July 1st, and announced the completion of the rollout on July 12th. Generally, these updates are expected to take two weeks to complete — however this update took only 12 days, and the previous June Core Update took 10 days.

As we’ve been covering in previous Industry News articles, this Core Update is one of several updates rolled out by Google in the past few months. While we can’t be certain that it is the last big update this summer, it is at least the last planned and announced update for the time being.

This means that the majority of announced updates have been completed, with the exception of the Page Experience Update which is expected to be completed in August.

See below a recap of the latest Google Updates.

Recap of July 2021 Core Update

The July 2021 Core Update was the second half of a two-part update, along with the June 2021 Core Update. Google initially said that there were parts of the update that were not yet ready to be released so they decided to split the update in two, releasing part of the update in June and part of the update in July.

There wasn’t much information shared about what the update would look like, aside from general improvements to search algorithms and a more quality user experience. But one important detail surround the release - Google included that some of the changes from the June update could be reversed with the July update.

Like any update, we expected fluctuations during the rollout and anticipate that it will smooth out following the completion of the update. If you want to make sure that any ranking drops you’re seeing aren’t caused by any technical mishaps, unexpected changes or any other issues — we recommend going through our 13-step checklist (opens in a new tab).

Previous Google’s updates this summer

The July 2021 Core Update is just one of several updates and launches from Google this summer. Keeping up with this rare-occurrence of multiple, sometimes simultaneous, updates has been a whirlwind for the SEO community over the past few months— and has made it even more difficult to understand and assess the impact these updates have had on sites, if any at all.

To that end, here’s an overview of the latest announced updates and releases:

• Page Experience Update: Currently rolling out
• June 2021 Core Update: Completed
• July 2021 Core Update: Completed
• Search Console Insights: Launched
• Spam Update Part 1 & 2: Completed

Dive into the July Core Update depths

As you may have noticed, these updates have been the talk of the SEO town for the past few months. And for the July Core Update in particular, there’s been plenty of chatter about the update having more activity than previous updates.

For those wanting to dive into the commentary and analysis about preliminary results, check out the following:

• Barry Schwartz on Twitter (opens in a new tab)
• Google Core Update July 2021 — Sistrix (opens in a new tab) (Data up to July 6)
• Rapid-fire Insights From The Summer of Two Core Updates — Glenn Gabe (opens in a new tab)
• Google’s July 2021 Core Update: Winners, Losers & Analysis - Lily Ray (opens in a new tab)

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