Google Shakes Up Search with Sweeping November 2024 Algorithm Update
Julie Blankenship
Is editor at rank1pro.com, has a decade of writing experience. With a strong background in Digital Marketing and PR Agencies.
- News Last Updated November 12, 2024
The entire search marketing industry is in shock following a dramatic turn of events as Google yesterday rolled out its much-anticipated November 2024 core algorithm update. This already seems to be bringing about significant disruption to global search rankings, with many website owners scrambling to get back on their feet after the update.
The most recent of the various tweaks and refinements that the company has made towards optimizing and enhancing the overall quality of its search results is the November 2024 core update which Google says has started to roll out fully. Unlike other, more targeted updates, this far-reaching algorithmic shift will touch upon Google’s evaluation and ranking of web content in every language and region.
“Today we released the November 2024 core update. We will add it to our ranking release history page soon and update when the rollout is complete,” Google tweeted, referring users to the company’s official documentation on core updates.
Industry insiders have already started bracing for massive changes in search performance as the update begins to take hold. While Google is saying most sites will change little, some may in reality face dramatic ranking shifts – both up and down.
“We recommend waiting a few weeks before you make any changes to your site for the update to fully roll out”, says Google’s Search Liaison team. “Once the dust settles, take a close look at pages that experienced major ranking drops and analyze them for our quality guidelines”.
The search giant also warns about the time-consuming process of regaining rankings once a ranking drop has been experienced because of the core update, reminding that it’s slow and sometimes even painful, without a guarantee that the former ranks could be regained.
“It might take months for our systems to fully process and verify improvements so don’t expect overnight results, Google’s documentation states. Search is always evolving based on what users need, so rankings will continue to change even after an update is finished”.
Developers and website owners should be keeping a close eye on the changes in the Google Search Console data, especially reporting high-priority page positions that have fallen by 20 or more. The key to it all is using Google’s guidelines to evaluate the quality of content that might be able to identify the trouble spots.
This week’s core update was Google’s last of 2024, after an amazingly active year that brought with it several significant shake-ups in search rankings. As the dust settles on this update, SEO professionals and site owners alike will be laser-focused on truly understanding the full sweep of this November 2024 update and finding their course for recovery and optimization in the months ahead.
