Australian SEO Consultant Reports Findings on Google’s July 2021 Algorithm Update

- Search engine Google released a new update to its algorithm in July 2021

- SEO experts around the world are reporting mixed results due to the update

- Australian SEO consultant Blake Smith recommends not making drastic changes until results settle down

Sydney, Australia: Google's July 2021 Core Update is over, as the search engine announced the rollout of the update was complete on July 13. These updates are made periodically to fight spam in the search results. The search engine optimisation community reports mixed results of the outcome.

The official announcement came via the official Twitter handle of @SearchLiaison and the details remain similar to other Core Updates. The SEO community is reporting the effects of this update were felt almost immediately, which is unusual for most Google updates. Earlier this year Google announced that it was fighting spam with a new anti-spam AI, so some SEO’s are speculating that Google may have introduced new spam-fighting elements to its ranking algorithm.

“I have noticed some turbulence in the search results since the announcement. Many other SEO’s, particularly those overseas, are reporting a rise in low-quality sites in the search results. In Australia I haven;t noticed much of that for the keywords I monitor. Thankfully for me and my clients, our results have actually improved.” said Blake Smith, Australian SEO consultant and Virtual Marketing Manager at agency E-Web Marketing.

Other SEO experts have reported that some large websites have suffered ranking drops due to the update. In particular, Pinterest may have been a victim to the July core update. Some of the different country variants of the social network (such as .ca, .co.uk, etc) have seen reduced visibility. Lily Ray, Sr. Director of SEO & Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital, tweeted “Here are the different Pinterest ccTLDs, which saw huge visibility increases in the U.S. throughout 2020. Those sites are taking a nosedive right now. We have already noticed for some ecomm clients that product/category pages are replacing spots previously held by Pinterest.”

For sites that experience drops in traffic due to these updates, taking a “wait and see” approach may be the best course of action. “Check to see if any manual actions have been applied to your page via Google Search Console” say’s Blake Smith. “ Manual actions will lower your page ranking or remove it entirely from Search results. If there’s nothing there, you should probably just wait to see if the site bounces back up in the coming weeks before doing anything drastic.”

Roger Montti says many search engine professionals have an outdated approach to rectifying issues that stem from Google updates. “This idea that sites lose positions because of something “bad” they did is an outdated form of analyzing or conceptualizing what happened in an update. So if your site has suffered a negative search performance change it’s a good practice to look outside your site first to try to understand what may have changed then return to your site and see if any insights are to be gained.”

SEO experts should continue to monitor the changes in the search results. For those wanting to stay up to date on the flux of search engine results pages you can check tools such as RankRanger, Sistrix, and Algoroo. Anyone that has experienced a drop in rankings should read Google’s recommendations on what website owners should know about Google’s core updates here: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates

Blake Smith is an Australian SEO consultant who works with small, medium and large businesses on improving their search marketing results. Contact Blake at blakesmithy.com for digital marketing, connect with him on LinkedIn or contact E-Web Marketing on how one's business can improve their SEO performance.