Few movements on SERPs in the November 2021 Core Update di Google

Another minor update, as already seen with the effects of the July 2021 Core Update and as, in some way, promised by Danny Sullivan: in fact, the November 2021 Google Core Update did not make any huge changes to most sites and no particular changes in ranking or traffic were seen in the two-week rollout, officially concluded last November 30. But let’s see together what SEOZoom and the other tools reveal on the effects on the SERPs of this fall intervention of updating Google’s algorithms.

Analysis of the November 2021 Core Update

Starting in the afternoon of 17 November, the latest Google update was officially completed on November 30, as confirmed by the official @searchcentralc account.

So, it took exactly 13 days to conclude the rollout of the November 2021 Core Update globally, a figure in line with those of the latest updates of the search engine. As a result, if our site has seen changes in rankings and traffic in the period between 17 and 30 November, these changes were probably related to the main update of Google.

SEOZoom data: few key movements

As usual, the tools in our suite allow us to monitor the movements of SERP and are useful to visually understand what were the effects of the November 2021 Core Update in various versions of Google.

Well, at a general level stands the blue, sign of an activity that does not differ from the recorded historical average, because the variations that were actually found in the pages of Google between 17 and 30 November are small, to say the least. And this applies to all the databases in the SEOZoom SERP Observatory, and then Italy, UK and Spain.

In particular, in Italy there were some jolts only on November 18 – the actual first day of rollout – and then again on the 25, which affected in both circumstances the first page fluctuations (movements inside the first page of Google) and large variations (the most obvious sign of Google’s testing activities, which literally moves results up or down in Serps).

Similar is the situation on Google UK, where however some effect was also seen on November 26 compared to results dropped out from the top10 (and therefore rankings that have affected the entry of new sites among the best) and small changes (small movements)while a bit more articulate proved the impact on Google ES.

Here, in fact, the November Core Update had a rather poisonous tail, causing shocks from 27 to 30, in particular between first page fluctuations and large variations in SERP, with the small variations that curiously were quite upset in the days immediately before the release of the update (ie between November 12 and 17).

The observations of foreign analysts

As usual, to provide a more in-depth picture on the effects of the core update we also propose the observations of international analysts, which substantially confirm the perceptions provided by SEOZoom.

For example, already on November 22, Marie Haynes launched a survey on Twitter to ask the SEO what impact the November 2021 Core Update had, and about 50% of participants reported that they had “not felt much” this update on the sites he deals with – By contrast, 21% reported declines and 19% noted improvements.

According to the analysis by Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Land, the update “hit hard within the first 24 hours of the announcement and then slowed down quickly”, revealing however “more substantial than the July 2021 Core Update” for many queries tracked by data providers; more specifically, had three big days with spikes in movements (at least on Google US), ie between November 17-18, 24-25 and finally the 30th.

It is above all the volatility of SERP that has been higher than last July, both desktop and mobile; among the sectors, the most affected are as usual those related to YMYL topics, starting from the health sector. Among the most curious data, “16% of the first 20 results were not listed in Google Search results before the November update”, but appeared then from the third page to go down.

What SEO experts have noticed

Roger Montti also gathered some considerations and data on the November 2021 Core Update, reporting the assessments of various international experts; for example, for the well-known search marketer Kenichi Suzuki the November 2021 core update had a much smaller impact on Google rankings in Japan than other updates, with “ranking changes that are not so different from daily fluctuations“, although he finds more attention from Google in “looking at who (author/company) publishes content” – an aspect in line with the focus on E-A-T which is central at this stage, as also confirmed by the latest update of the guidelines for quality raters.

Jim Boykin, founder of Internet Marketing Ninjas, also offers his contribution to Montti, and reveals that “12 customers have had really impressive ranking/traffic improvements, about 25 customers have not seen any particular effects and 7 customers have suffered a slight decline; about 5 of the 7 that have fallen have fallen by 1-3 positions in the ranking, Two of those seven had bigger declines”. Ultimately, for Boykin this was “just another update of the algorithm: there will always be winners and losers each time”.

Jason Barnard instead noted extreme volatility in the Knowledge Graph, reporting that Google was returning 6% more results based on the Knowledge Graph in the days immediately prior to the launch of the update – an increase he defines “huge, in a measure never seen before”. According to the expert Ammon Johns, again, the quiet nature of this update could indicate that Google has made more changes related to the infrastructure to make Google’s algorithms more efficient.

Montti himself leaves us two interesting considerations. The first is practical: social media have been relatively quiet during this update, which suggests that whatever impact it had was not widely perceived in the way you would feel an important update – and this also applies to our social networks, which are quite quiet.

The other aspect that highlights the editor of Search Engine Journal is that a few days ago Google published a research paper that “points to improvements in algorithms that can greatly accelerate current question response activities and, in the future, greatly increase Google’s ability to answer more complex questions”. One of these models is called FLAN and “focuses the training of natural language on the resolution of tasks of different types and therefore generalizes the method, so as to allow its application to a wide variety of tasks”, and just in conjunction with this Google has also officially unveiled “a new AI architecture called Pathways, which seems to do many of the things that FLAN claims to improve”. Montti does not dare to find a link between update and such news, but still points out that there are many fronts on which Google is working to improve its answers.