On May 25th the “Google Search Central” Twitter handle announced the release of a new Core Update also known as a “Broad Core Update”. This is the first announced Google update since the Desktop Page Experience Update in February of this year and the first Core Update since November of 2021 and it ended on June 9th, 2022.

These updates can take several weeks to fully roll out so any major changes in your Google search rankings or traffic over the next 14 days could be attributed to this update. Google’s vergbiage around this update is unchanged from previous “broad core” updates. You can think of this update as large refresh of how Google’s search engine rewards content across the web with rankings and how it assesses that content overall.

Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan did not tweet about this update or provide any guidance on it and hasn’t posted to his Twitter since May 20th.

This update also seems to have good timing hitting the lull between school graduations and summer vacation time, giving it a spot where some websites who do suffer reduced rankings may not notice immediately.

Here is everything we know about the Google Search May 2022 Core Update

May 2022 Core Update Vitals

• Date Started: May 25th, 2022 (USA)
• Date Completed: June 9th, 2022 (USA)
• First Impact Reported: Max Peters reported a Non-English medical information website like WebMD seeing large traffic increases on Twitter at 6:56 AM on May 26th, 2022
• Most Impacted Industry(ies): Unknown
• Most Impacted Site(s): Unknown
• Most Impacted Website Types: Unknown
• Most Impacted Content Types: Unknown
• SEO Change Proven to Improve: Unknown

First major impact reported via Twitter:
(the chart shows hourly increases compared to same day the week prior, the dropoff is because that time of day had not yet occured)

Non-english medical publications. (Think webMD) pic.twitter.com/2LzqA6MDl2

— Max Peters (@maxjpeters) May 26, 2022

May 2022 Core Update Facts

• Released at end of school semester and prior to most summer vacations.
• Update is NOT site-specific, same as all other known Core Updates.
• This core update may take 1 to 2 weeks to fully roll out and impact websites.
• Not all websites or documents will get a ranking increase or decrease from this update.

Media Coverage of Google’s May 2022 Core Update

• Search Engine Roundtable – Google May 2022 Broad Core Update Is Live – What We Are Seeing Now
• Search Engine Roundtable – The SEO Impact Of The Google May 2022 Broad Core Update

Transparency Report

We add this section when an update may have impacted our clients or our portfolio of websites. Below you’ll find positive and negative impacts to client websites / our websites if those impacts were deemed statistically significant AND if we believe we understand one or more of the reasons behind the adjustment.

Wins
1. Publisher Client 1 – 1 article gained 185% in traffic during this core update. This traffic all went to an article which we reworked slightly months before the update. Our rework included rewording a fact the client had in the article to add a comparisson. (i.e. the fact was a distance in meters, we explained an object of the same approximate length). The article moved from an average position of 2.6 in Google Search Console to an average position of 1.1 for all relevant keywords.

2. Local Remodeling Client – 65% of locally targeted service pages saw an increase in organic search traffic of 24% to 98%. A solid win for this client who continues to climb into the top 3 positions for the most coveted queries in their area.

3. Local Medical Client – 27,866.67% increase in traffic to factual medical content created to help their local audience. It took quite some time for us to convince Google that this was a real, legitimate, medical website but the end results were astounding. Each article on their website also includes a call to action to setup an appointment using our exclusive WordPress plugins “WP Action Buttons” and leads have been pouring in.

4. Publisher Client 2 – 103% increase in Pageviews from Google traffic sources. We have been working with this client to improve the quality of their content, improve internal linking, fixing a large number of technical issues, and helping them organically improve the quality and volume of their inbound linking. The 103% increase in Pageviews has nearly doubled their advertising revenue.

5. Our Site – 100% to 200% increase in organic search traffic to all target service pages on our site. This has led to a roughly 75% increase in leads generated by these pages.

6. Our site – A 107% increase in traffic to targeted help articles.

Losses
1. Publisher Client 1 – 1 article lost 64% of traffic during this core update, another lost 82% of traffic. In both cases the articles were about subject matters which would overtake the #1 position during this update and in both cases we anticipated this future outcome. In the first instance the traffic all went to an article about a new website and was published in December of 2020. We checked the various keywords related to this article and discovered that the website the article was written about now largley holds the #1 ranking position for these non-branded keywords and the article now ranks #2 to #4 position. In the second instance the article was about a new product and was published in February of 2021. The brand’s product page had ranked #2 until this update, the losses occured because the pages switched ranking positions with the brand’s product page taking the #1 spot for all relevant keywords and the news article dropping to the #2 spot.

2. Local Remodeling Client – All blog posts suffered some losses between 17% and 62% of organic search traffic. After investigation we uncovered that these losses all came from non-local geographic regions. The client’s blog posts still rank extremely high in the local market (and appear unchanged to pre-update times), but when a VPN is set to another part of the country their rankings disappear and are replaced by more general interest websites such as Pinterest, Houzz, and HGTV as well as niche blogs that are not geographic centric. While this is a loss in overall traffic it is not much of a loss for the client since none of this traffic would have ever converted (they may lose some organic inbound links).

3. Our site – We lost nearly 90% of traffic going to a popular help article about a Facebook issue. Google’s Core updates keep elevating our article to the #1 spot then the next update pushes this below 3 or 4 articles from Facebook on the same subject, all of which are inaccurate (unfortunately). This is a traffic loss, however, a very small percentage of these users ever even signup for our email newsletter and it has a 0% conversion rate over the 3 years the article has been live on our site. We anticipate the article will be at the top again here either before or during the next update.

Google May 2022 Core Update Help

1. Do not panic. I know that sounds easy to say, but panic caused by a Google core update rarely solves problems with rankings.
2. If your negative impact is directly affecting transactional pages (i.e. pages that drive revenue for your business) consider a PPC, Facebook/IG, TikTok, or other advertising campaign to make up for lost sales.
3. If your negative impact is directly affecting informational content you may want to compare your content to the new top ranking document. Review the intent of both documents, look for missing elements in your content, and do entity anlaysis to see if you can find ways to improve your content for the next update.
4. Read Google’s guidance on the May 2022 Core Update from their website here: May 2022 core update releasing for Google Search
5. Read Google’s guidance on Core Updates from their website here: What webmasters should know about Google’s core updates
6. Hire an awesome SEO agency either one in your local area or one talented at finding and fixing issues related to algorithm updates *hint* you are reading our website *hint*.

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