Google’s Major Updates Summer 2021

Google has made an unusually high number of algorithm updates this summer – changes significant enough that you’ll most likely need to take action if you want to stay visible in the search results. Here’s what you need to do to catch up after the holidays.

You’ve just returned from vacation – the barbecue has been going non-stop, the new deck has been well used – but for some reason, the search results look completely different when you open your work laptop. That’s because Google rolled out a series of updates during the summer, shaking up the search results quite a bit. Our quick poll on LinkedIn, with responses from 50 SEO professionals, showed that a full third saw their rankings change in the Core Update rolled out in early July – and that was only one of several updates this summer.

Core Update, July 1, 2021

To begin with, the update that, from what we can see, had the biggest impact in Sweden this summer: Google rolled out yet another Core Update. We can see a greater emphasis on content, which also aligns with what Google themselves have stated. In the video above, I go through the “news” in the update, focusing on the self-check questions Google encourages us to ask about our content. Tackling all of these across your entire site can be a huge job, and we should remember this is more of a scale than black-and-white rules. In the video, I highlight the aspects I believe are most important to use as a starting point. Keep in mind that this may change.

The questions Google thinks we should ask

• Does the headline and page title provide a clear description of the content?
• Does the title accurately reflect what is actually on the page?
• Does the title avoid “clickbait”?
• Does the headline match the page content?
• Does the site provide a substantial or complete description of the topic?
• Does each page seem to get enough attention?
• Is the text positioned high on the page?
• Is the text visible directly on the page?
• Is the text the main focus for the visitor?
• Would the text look the same without SEO in mind?
• If there are internal links, are they used in moderation?
• Is keyword stuffing avoided?
• Is the text easy to read?
• Is the text interesting?
• Is there a named author?
• Are spelling mistakes avoided?
• Are grammatical errors avoided?
• Are obvious factual errors avoided?
• Is the text trustworthy?
• Is the content unique?
• Are there few or no ads on the page?
• Does the content reference research or experts?
• Are sources linked?

Here you can find Google’s original version of these questions from 2011

Link Spam Update, July 26, 2021

On July 26, Google released what we see as the second most impactful update of the summer. We’ve noticed significant changes in some search results, and Google has taken action against things like footer links pointing to your site. We’ve also concluded that bad links can actually have a negative effect again, something Google had previously suggested they stopped doing. According to the Search Console Help Center, Google recently stated: “Google works very hard to make sure that actions on third-party sites do not negatively affect a website. In some circumstances, incoming links can affect Google’s opinion of a page or site.” Notice they’re not saying it never happens—only that they’re working hard on it.

I dive deeper into this in the video, but if you’ve seen changes around—or just after—July 26, 2021, this is where you should start looking. It’s not 100% clear what Google currently considers “bad links,” but these are the first places I’d start checking among the links pointing to your site:

• Footer links
• Links in a different language than the page they’re pointing to
• Links with repetitive exact-match anchor text
• Other forms of sitewide links (links from every page of a site)
• Large numbers of nofollow, sponsored, or UGC links—for example, in blog comments
• Links from sites with lots of pages but very little authority

Page Experience Update throughout the summer

Google announced that throughout the summer, it would gradually roll out a Page Experience Update. This is purely about Core Web Vitals. It can be hard to separate the effects of this update from those of the Core Update, or perhaps they are two sides of the same coin. For anyone working with SEO, that distinction matters less—what matters is that a site needs both good content and a solid user experience, and those two aspects reinforce each other. Hopefully, you are already working actively on Core Web Vitals, but I’d like to highlight a few actions that are especially important:

• Your site must load quickly. Speed remains crucial for user experience and search visibility, so make sure you have reliable hosting, caching, and avoid loading too many slow external resources. Test with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). This is when elements on the page move around as content loads. You’ve probably experienced accidentally clicking an ad because it suddenly shifted into place where the article was. While not the biggest issue today, CLS is becoming more important as more sites struggle with it. Here’s an in-depth article from Search Engine Journal.

Spam Update 1 & 2, June 23 and June 28

From what we can tell, this update was originally meant to be rolled out as one release, but something went wrong, so Google split it into two parts. This update—or rather, these updates—seem to have had less impact on valuable search results (both in Sweden and in other markets we track). Our conclusion is that most SEOs were not significantly affected. It’s possible that only sites using fairly aggressive tactics were hit. Our guess is that this mainly concerned thin content, auto-generated pages, and similar practices. Read more about the background of these updates here.

Key takeaways

A lot has happened over the summer. The Core Update and the Link Spam Update are probably the biggest events. If I had seen major changes in my search results around those dates, that’s where I would start investigating. It’s worth keeping track of the update timelines, because knowing when something changed makes it much easier to understand what happened. If you’d like to get this kind of news faster, I recommend following our YouTube channel, where we share these updates as quickly as possible.