Who Will be Most Impacted by the Google January 2020 Core Update

The Google January 2020 Core Update is complete

On January 13th 2020, Google announced the release of a broad core algorithm update. Of course, this is by no means novel. Updates like these typically happen on a quarterly basis and tend to roll out over a period of a few to several days. According to Google, last week’s update was “mostly done” by Thursday morning January 16th, but around two weeks to fully complete.

YMYL sites could be most impacted by this update

There are two aspects of this particular update that have been the subject of chatter across the SEO community. One, the January 2020 Core Update is global, and as Google’s Danny Sullivan confirms, all Google’s updates from this point forward will be global releases — not only released in English or in the United States — unless Google says otherwise. 

Second, this particular update seems “substantial and big based on some of the early chatter and signals.” 

But, most of this chatter points to “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) sites as being the most impacted by this update. YMYL sites are niches within Health and Finance, and include (per Google): “pages or topics [that] could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.” 

Parallel Path’s Take

At Parallel Path, we help our client partners across health, wellness, and lifestyle grow faster through the power of digital marketing, some of whom would be included in the “YMYL” umbrella. Initial deep dives into Google Analytics for each of our clients haven’t revealed any changes that could be attributed to the core update. Our Earned/Owned Media Team constantly follows these kinds of updates closely, monitoring client KPI in Google Analytics and across our custom data collection infrastructure, and running regular audits as part of our SEO service. We’ll continue to monitor as the core update continues to roll out — and make any recommendations, along with any strategy and tactical changes that will best serve our client partners’ goals for success. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how our best-in-class SEO can help you achieve your marketing goals, please reach out. We’d love to help.

 

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