Google’s March 2019 Core Algorithm Update

March 22, 2019 3:35 pm Published by admin

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Google announced the first core algorithm update of 2019 on March 13th. This update was broader than previous updates, meaning it affected more than just one portion of the algorithm and has no clear cause and effect. There was a flurry of unconfirmed algorithm updates leading up to the announcement that started in early February.

For our real estate clients, we analyzed the traffic, visibility, keyword ranking, and crawl stats and saw no pattern of trends from the update. Many webmasters from other industries are seeing both increases and decreases in traffic, visibility, and keyword rankings. Here’s what we think happened and what you can do about it:

1. Google “toned back” some of the updates from last year, specifically the March 2018 and August 2018 updates. If you saw any patterns of change from these updates last year, you likely saw some immediate change from this update.
   • What to do: check your traffic and visibility on March 14th. If your traffic is down, let us know, and we’ll take a look at your site to see what you can do.
2. Google refreshed the data that feeds portions of their deep learning and machine learning algorithms that influences search results. We’re continuing to see daily movement from this update in our position trackers and in 3rd party algorithm trackers.
   • What to do: Monitor search results closely over the next 30-45 days as the full effect of the algorithm gets in motion.
3. Google is shifting more towards machine learning updates over human made changes to the algorithm. A couple of examples of features included in the algorithm are Rank Brain and Neural Matching. Google summarizes these features as such: RankBrain helps Google better relate pages to concepts. Neural matching helps Google better relate words to searches.
   • What to do: Learn about these topics as best you can, so you understand how to better relate your website and content to Google’s interpretation of user intent.