Google’s June 2019 SEO Update: Broad Core Search Algorithm Update & Domain Diversity

Google, rather unusually, pre-announced a core algorithm update that hit the search results in early June.

The broad core algorithm update rolled out on June 3rd, and changes in the search results were seen for the following week.

Tomorrow, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the June 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this tweet for more about that:https://t.co/tmfQkhdjPL

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 2, 2019

These core updates are the algorithm updates which directly impact and influence how search results are ranked and listed on Google’s search engine result pages.

Core updates occur every few months, with the last one hitting in March 2019.

This time around, Google decided to pre-announce the update, as they wish to be more proactive when it comes to making changes to the SERPs.

Google stressed it, in itself, is not an unusually big event, but they wished to let the online SEO community know so people are not wondering what happened to their traffic and rankings.

At the time of writing, these is no distingushable theme.

It took 5 days to roll out completely, finishing on June 8th. So if you see any changes in your traffic or rankings around that period, you are likely impacted by the update.

The update did hit many large organisations – the Daily Mail for instance, saw its traffic drop considerably.

The Daily Mail is notorious in the UK for poor quality content, and as such could have been seen as violating Google’s webmaster guidelines. The site itself saw much criticism from an SEO standpoint regarding these guidelines.

Diversity Algorithm Update

On June 6, Google also announced another search updated which dealt with domain diversity. This is unrelated to the June 2019 core update that previously began rolling out.

So, if in early June you are seeing fluctuations in your organic traffic and rankings, then it could be down to either of these.

You should still be able to measure the impact of each individually as they were released apart.

The domain diversity update is not as much about ranking, but it changes how URLs are shown.

This meant that Google would show a more diverse set of search results – showing not over 2 results from the same domain for any query within the top results.

This means that if you do a search, and previously 3 or 4 of these were from the domain, this should not be the case any longer.

Have you ever done a search and gotten many listings all from the same site in the top results? We've heard your feedback about this and wanting more variety. A new change now launching in Google Search is designed to provide more site diversity in our results….

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 6, 2019

This will only alter the core results, and does not include additional features such as videos, images, stories or otherwise. This is all about the main listings in the SERPs.

However, this is not always the case. There are certain search terms that will lend itself to showing from the same domain. This would include branded queries.

Sub-domains are also treated as part of the main domain – so any blog or sub-domains will be counted as the same domain. Sub-domains are treated as part of a root domain.