February SERP fluctuations not a core update

Posted by Edith MacLeod on 17 Feb, 2020
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Google’s Danny Sullivan says “we do updates all the time”.

Google updating.

SEOs and webmasters observed large fluctuations in the SERPs on the first weekend in February. These started around 7-8th Feb and rumours were rife about another Google search algorithm core update.

The movement does seem to have been big.

 

Algaroo.

Algaroo

Rank Ranger.

Rank Ranger

Google has adopted a policy of pre-announcing and confirming updates, but on this occasion remained silent.

Google’s Danny Sullivan responded to repeated questions about this on 13th February, tweeting: “We do updates all the time”. He linked to a Twitter thread from last November which explained the difference between core and non-core updates:

Core updates.

So despite the large movements, it seems this was not a core update. It’s not unusual to have changes and then see these reversed over the following few days as Google adjusts.

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