Google: We Are Communicating About More Algorithm Updates

Another point from the Google NYC SEO Meetup the other night was that Danny Sullivan at Google said Google has been more active about communicating about algorithm updates now than ever before. Danny said Google communicates more often about algorithm updates, which is why it feels that there are so many more updates now than previously.

Danny's talk was a recap of his Google blog post over here but with a lot of SEO humor added.

Lily Ray tweeted this comment:

Google isn’t doing more updates, they’re just sharing more information about the updates publicly

They share this information so you can know if any traffic volatility was due to a Google update

via @dannysullivan @Marie_Haynes got a little shout out ☺️ pic.twitter.com/ZtwubFiO3n

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) June 27, 2022

So yea, Google has been communicating more about Google updates. It was funny because Danny referenced one of my stories about there being way too many updates.

But Danny said Google intentionally starts and stops these bigger updates so that they do not overlap. Danny said this before, saying "We also have been working to keep different update types launched separately from each other when we can, so creators have a better sense of changes."

We have updates all the time. We'll certainly have more spam updates, more core updates, likely more of other types. We also have been working to keep different update types launched separately from each other when we can, so creators have a better sense of changes.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 4, 2021

Like, I had to make this infographic once to plot all the updates Google communicated about - this wasn't even all of them:

One point, Google is doing more updates, which Danny did confirm later on in his talk. In short, Google did 5,000 updates in 2021, 4,500 updates in 2020, 3,200 updates before that, and so on. So yes, Google is doing more "updates" - however Google defines updates.

So yes, there are more updates but Google is also communicating about more updates.

Forum discussion at Twitter.