As we’ve addressed in recent blog posts, Google has rolled out a new core algorithm update and product review update. And as of the 26th of September, the tech giants confirmed that the update is now complete.

The quiet announcement was made via Google’s search ranking updates page:

Screenshot from: developers.google.com/search/updates/ranking, September 2022.

When were the updates rolled out? 

The updates themselves were rolled out across the month of September. The core update began on September 12th, with the product review update launching a week later on September 26th.

Magically, both updates finished rolling out on the same day, September 26. This will be music to those marketers’ ears who’ve been eagerly waiting to asses their impact.

What Do I Do Next?

Well, it’s finally time to begin assessing the impact of the updates by closely analysing your website’s traffic patterns and rankings. 

Should you notice any significant and sustained changes whilst doing so, this is likely to be linked to both of or one of the updates.

How Can I Tell You Tell I’ve You’ve Been Impacted By The Core Update

It’s known that Google’s core updates apply across all search engine results and that they also have the ability to affect entire websites. 

John Muller, a Google Search Advocate, explains in the excerpt below how core updates work to target a whole site rather than its specific elements: 

“With the core updates, we don’t focus so much on just individual issues, but rather the relevance of the website overall.

And that can include things like the usability, and the ads on a page, but it’s essentially the website overall.”

With this in mind, those changes to search rankings across the majority of your website’s pages highlight that the core update impacted you. 

How Can I Tell If I’ve Been Impacted By The Product Review Update

The impact of this one is a little easier to highlight, as naturally the product review updates are only applied to those search results which include product reviews. 

Therefore, if you are not publishing product reviews, then you simply will not be impacted by the update.

On the other hand, if you do publish product reviews, you want to pay close attention to your rankings. If you identify changes that are limited to product review pages, this is likely to be because of the update. 

If ranking changes are across your entire site then this plays down to the impact of the core update.

Keep up to date with eCommerce Expert as we continue to review the impact of these major updates.

Thanks for reading,

Myk Baxter, eCommerce Consultant