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Google’s November Core Update Result

On 17 November, Google announced through Twitter that they are releasing a broad core update, which it called November Core Update.

As an SEO professional I was a bit worried because it was a core update that was supposed to have a lot of effect on the rankings of my client websites.

SEO experts all over the world were closely monitoring how the update would affect their websites.

Google had warned that there could be massive effects on rankings of websites, and they expect a lot of up and downs in website rankings.

Though the update was rolled out on 17 November, it got completed on 30 November.

Experts who analyzed the effects of the core update are of the opinion that it was a mild update, and it didn’t result in a lot of changes in the search engine rankings of websites.

Major changes that happened to websites, if at all they happened, are here to stay until the next update.

Obviously, the daily changes in the rankings due to constantly updated search index will be experienced always.

Widely respected search marketer Ammon Johns thinks that the November Core update was more of an infrastructure update from Google.

Personally, I didn’t feel any significant impacts of the core update on my clients’ websites, except may be one.

But that website had been affected by Japanese Keyword Hack as well.

So, the drops in keyword ranking could well be the effect of the hack rather than the core update.

After the Japanese Keyword hack issue has been solved, I am slowly seeing improvement in the ranking of that website as well.

I am however still disappointed to see how some of my competitor websites are still ranking well due to the backlinks they have received from unrelated dot edu sites and other authoritative websites.

Even after a main update like the Penguin and improvements in search algorithm using AI and machine learning, it’s a shame that Google still can’t find out and penalize websites that get spam links from unrelated websites.

SEOs out there, what are your experiences of the November Core update? Please post them as comments.

(This article was published first in my LinkedIn profile here.)