SEO News: Google Roll Out Core Update and Crack Down on Fraud

Join us this week as our SEO expert Luke takes us trough all the latest developments in the world of SEO including Googles latest updates.

SEO NEWS: GOOGLE ROLL OUT CORE UPDATE AND CRACK DOWN ON FRAUD

This June has proven to be an important month in SEO, in the last week Google have rolled out their latest Core update, cracked down on fraudulent financial advertisements and released the second part of their important spam update.

Google's July 2021 Core Update now Rolling Out!

The core algorithm update was announced by Google last month and is beginning to roll out from July 1, 2021. The update is broad and a continuation of the June 2021 core update so is expected to take about two weeks to be completed.

Last month was very intense in terms of Google updates with four significant roll outs impacting SEO:

• Google roll out spam algorithm update
• Page experience update
• Googles June 2021 Core Update
• Slander Targeted by Googles recent Algorithm Update

It is important to realise that each of these updates can have significant impact on site owners, with core updates impacting the greatest amount of websites as they are rolled out broadly to all search results.

By knowing when Google is updating its search ranking algorithms it gives us a good reference if there have been any sudden fluctuations in a websites rankings, therefore moving into the following weeks of July it is important to keep an eye on your current analytics and rankings to see if they have been affected.

What to do if you’re impacted?

Google is aware that these core updates can shake up rankings for some site owners and although there aren’t really any specific actions to take in order to recover, Google has provided a list of questions to consider if your website has been negatively impacted by one of their updates.

Google Tightening their Policies of Financial Service ads in the UK

Google has announced it is going to be tightening its policies for Financial services advertisers in the UK, the policy will be published on August 30th 2021 and then later enforced by September 6th.

The rate of online fraud and scams has been increasing drastically with Action fraud stating that Britons lost around £1.7BN to scams over the last 12 months and that 85% of all this fraud was cyber related.

Just in the last month £63m had been lost by the victims of investment fraud who blamed social media platforms when reporting the crimes.

Google UK managing director Ronan Harris said in regards to the policy announcement:
“Todays announcement reflects significant progress in delivering a safer experience for users, publisher and advertisers”

The tightening of these policies boils down to one key change, Google will now only run ads for financial products and services when the advertiser has been officially verified by the financial watchdog, the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority).

To learn more about Google’s Advertising Policies that cover Financial products and services click here.

Google release the second part of their Spam Update

On June 28th Google announced they were rolling out the second antispam update and similarly to their first spam update it would be completed on the same day that it was announced.

Both parts of this spam update were global in that they both targeted web and image results as confirmed by Google’s Danny Sullivan.

It is important that site owners are aware of the issues that are attached to spam especially with it being so prevalent across the internet, Statista reports that in September 2020 almost 47.3% of all email traffic was spam.

If a site were to suddenly drop in rankings following Google’s new spam updates it would be wise to review your websites security and look for any indicators of an attack.

If you want to learn more about Google’s first spam update read Oliver’s article in our blog section here!

That's the end of our weekly SEO news update! If you would like more information on any of these topics then please get in touch.