A Week Into Google’s June 2019 Broad Core Update

A Week Into Google’s June 2019 Broad Core Update

It has been a week since Google rolled out their pre-announced June 2019 broad core update. Leading SEO news websites such as Search Engine Journal and many others have already published articles regarding some wins and losses. This is one of the rare instances where Google has let us know ahead of time that they’re going to be updating their algorithm instead of just releasing it and letting us SEOs find out the hard way.

They officially rolled out the update last June 4 and it’s exactly been a week since. I wanted to share some findings and how you can improve your understanding of sudden algorithm changes that happen throughout the year.

Effects of the June 2019 Broad Core Update

I started checking the effects of the broad core update yesterday since it’s safe to assume that they fully rolled out the complete update after a couple of days of its official release. Here’s what I found:

Analytics Client Data

 

Analytics Client Data graph

 

Analytics big Client Data

The images above contain the traffic graph for three of our biggest and oldest clients and, as you may see, there aren’t notable changes to their traffic. It’s consistent, steady, and the trend hasn’t changed. Although one of them experienced an extremely minimal drop in traffic during the day that the broad core algorithm was rolled out, it could mostly be disregarded since it’s steadily climbing back up.

This is different from what Danny Sullivan, Google’s resident Search Liaison said in his tweet:

Danny Sullivan Tweet Screenshot

He explicitly stated that core updates are definitely noticeable. But maybe we’re one of the lucky ones that did not get affected by the broad core algorithm.

However, I can’t say the same for others. One of the leading cryptocoin news websites, CCN, was massively affected by the broad core update – leading to them shutting down since their loss of revenue was too great to support their team. This is what they said:

“Google’s June 2019 Core Update rolled out on June 3th 2019 and CCN’s traffic from Google searches dropped more than 71% on mobile overnight.

Our daily revenue is down by more than 90%.”

This is the most extreme result we can experience. Having to close down a profitable website all because of a single algorithm update by Google. You can attribute this to a variety of factors, but to really know the reason behind the loss of traffic, Google is the only one that can answer that.

SEO Tools are not Perfect

Although 3 of our biggest clients were not majorly affected, one of our oldest partners had an alarming drop after we checked it. Here’s a screenshot:

The date when our traffic dropped coincides with the date of the broad core update release, so it was alarming for us. We ran diagnostics on the website, checked if there was an attack or if there was something that violated Google’s guidelines. So far, we didn’t find anything that might have caused the drop. I decided to check other tools that could confirm if this was true. Here are some screenshots:

Google Search Console Traffic Data

The red arrow points to when the update was rolled out and as you can see, a drop didn’t happen. I needed to be sure and I check another tool:

Ahrefs Traffic Data

After finding this out, I was sure that there wasn’t anything wrong with our client’s traffic. We just needed to fix something with regard to the implementation of our Google Analytics’ tracking code.

Never rely on just one tool. It’s always best for us SEOs to have a variety of tools at our disposal because we can never hope to be too accurate. Having a variety of tools to cross-check your site’s data is the safest way to conduct site checks. If you rely heavily on a single tool, you might be looking at inaccurate or downright wrong data – which you’ll show to your client if you give them regular reports.

Key Takeaway

SEOs have to always be prepared to adapt and change our strategies accordingly since Google updates their algorithm regularly. For us to be able to do that, we need accurate data and effective tools to help with our campaigns. Google’s June Broad Core Update is just one among the many algorithm updates they’ve released and I’m sure this is not the last one.

Lastly, if you know that whatever you’re doing is in line with Google’s guidelines and all the strategies that you do are white-hat, you don’t have to worry about Google’s regular updates. Although we can never predict what Google will do next, it’s better to be safe than sorry. So far, the June Broad Core Update has had minimal effects on us and our clientele. What about you? Tell me about it in the comments below!

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Sean Si

About Sean

is a Filipino motivational speaker and a Leadership Speaker in the Philippines. He is the head honcho and editor-in-chief of SEO Hacker. He does SEO Services for companies in the Philippines and Abroad. Connect with him at Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Check out his new project, Aquascape Philippines.