Google has made quite the splash when it comes to core updates in the past few months, and that doesn’t exclude the month of November. Get ready to learn all about November’s SEO highlights and the important information you should be up-to-date with! Let’s get started!
Google Releases November 2023 Core Update
Google’s November 2023 Core Update was announced on November 2nd, 2023, and completed rolling out in two weeks. This is the fourth core update Google has made this year in 2023.
Today we released the November 2023 core update. We’ll update our ranking release history page when the rollout is complete: https://t.co/hgjEkfpbA2
Related to this, we’ve posted a Q&A on Google Search updates as a refresher about how updates work: https://t.co/N5p3KsJ0ta
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) November 2, 2023
Google said, that this core “update involves an improvement to a different core system than last month.” Google said its guidance about core updates is the same for both.
There was also a reviews update that came the following week. Google said this “will also mark a point when we’ll no longer be giving periodic notifications of improvements to our reviews system, because they will be happening at a regular and ongoing pace.”
Detailed Q&A
Along with rolling out the update, Google also posted a more detailed Q&A explaining the new core update and the upcoming reviews update. Here are a few highlights:
- Why another core update so soon? Google said, “We have different systems that are considered core to our ranking process; this month’s core update involves an improvement to a different core system than last month.”
- What is the difference between a ranking update and a ranking system? Google said, “Ranking systems are what we use to generate search results. We use multiple ranking systems that do different things. We have a guide to Google search ranking systems that explains some of our more notable ones. Updates are when we make an improvement to a ranking system.”
- What do updates do? Google said, “We use automated systems to rank search results, and like anything, these aren’t perfect. We’re always looking at ways to improve these systems to show better results.”
- Why do some updates overlap? Google said, “We do try to separate notable updates, so that if they produce changes, site owners can better identify which system is involved. However, given we have so many updates overall, it’s not always possible. In addition, when an update is evaluated and approved because it will make Search better, we don’t want to hold that back.”
- Why are some updates during the holiday season? Google said, “We do try to avoid having updates during the late-November to mid-December period when possible. But it’s not always possible. If we have updates that can improve Search, that have been developed over the course of several months, we release them when they’re ready.”
Google Releases November 2023 Reviews Update
Google released on November 8th, 2023, the November 2023 reviews update. This is the third reviews update of the year and this will be the last time Google announces a reviews update because, as it said, “because they will be happening at a regular and ongoing pace.”
Google posted, “Released the November 2023 reviews update. Learn more about how to write high quality reviews. Going forward, as the reviews system is now being improved at a regular and ongoing pace, we will no longer be posting about future updates on the status dashboard.”
The important things to highlight about this update is that it is happening at a “regular and ongoing pace.” Just be wary that changes to your website may be reflected with this reviews system in more real-time. This update still is a global update that impacts these languages; English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish.
Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines
For the first time in 2023, Google has updated its search quality raters guidelines with a number of updates including simplifying the needs met scale, adding some more modern examples, and some other minor changes.
The last update was around 11 months ago on December 15, 2022, which was a much larger update to the document.
Although search quality evaluators’ ratings do not directly impact rankings, they do provide feedback that helps Google improve its algorithms. It is important to spend some time looking at what Google changed in this updated version of the document and compare that to the previous version of the document to see if we can learn more about Google’s intent on what websites and web pages Google prefers to rank. Google made those additions, edits, and deletions for a reason.
