Google’s May 2022 Core Update: Mash World’s Analysis

If you are a site owner or part of the SEO community, you are probably aware that Google implemented a “broad core update” to its search engine algorithm on May 25, 2022. Formally known as the “May 2022 Core Update” as per an official statement on Google’s Search Central Blog. This update took about 15 days to roll out and was completed on June 9, 2022. 

It is considered Google’s first broad core update in over six months since November 2021. An algorithm update usually means Google is improving how its search engine evaluates webpages, which impacts your website’s rankings, traffic, and therefore, revenue. 

Since the effects of these updates take a few weeks to be noticeable. It is difficult to assess and subsequently prepare for a broad core update. Google doesn’t clarify what the update is or how it will affect your website because of the wide scope of broad core updates. 

So, what is happening to the search engine? how will Google’s algorithm update impact your website’s performance? how will content play a role? and what does this all mean for your business? 

We will discuss everything site owners need to know about Google’s May 2022 core update. 

 

What is a Broad Core Update?

Broad core updates represent a comprehensive modification process to the algorithm instead of a specifically targeted effort. 

Core updates are universal, impacting all countries and languages, and targeting all types of content on the web. These updates are released to promote specific web pages based on new criteria that Google implements in the update. 

According to Google, one way to understand how a core update works is to think of a list of the top 100 movies in a given year. Naturally, just like this list, the content Google features on its search engine needs to be refreshed every once in a while, to include new, high-quality content. 

Google changes its algorithm with each one of these core updates to make room for some of the new and wonderful content and webpages that never existed before, while, reassessing the ranking of existing ones. 

 

What is the impact of Google’s May 2022 Core Update?

Just to be clear Google never shares the changes they make. However, SEO experts from around the world, including Mash World’s SEO experts, keep an eye on any fluctuations in the search engine and share their findings with the SEO community. Therefore, Mash World made sure to include the top 4 impacts that SEO specialists and site owners recognized:

 1. Google’s May 2022 Core Update Impact on “Snippets”

One of the first visible changes caused by Google’s May 2022 core update is that it has undoubtedly impacted multiple snippet types for search engine results pages (SERPs) including:

1. FAQ snippets 
2. Featured Snippets 

1.1 The Effect on FAQ Snippets

A Frequently Asked Question or an FAQ-rich snippet is one of Google’s enhanced search snippets that include questions covered by the website owner and can’t be changed by users. Every question can be clicked to unfold an answer taken from the same website. 

One of the results of the Google May 2022 core update is a reported increase in FAQ snippets showing up on Google Search almost 23% more often than before. 

This is great news for site owners for the following reasons:

1. FAQ snippets allow Google to pull clicks from your website because it’s a clickable feature on the SERP for users to find answers to their questions.
2. They enable your web pages to get more clicks by adding credibility and expertise to your SERP listings. 
3. Providing strong content for FAQ snippets improves your overall search rankings. 

 1.2 The Effect on Featured Snippets

A featured snippet is a piece of content that appears at the top of Google’s SERP and offers users a quick short answer from one of the top-ranking pages. It usually pops up in the form of a paragraph, list, table, or video. 

Unlike FAQ snippets, featured snippets witnessed considerable fluctuations, which means rankings have seen either big gains or big losses due to Google’s May 2022 core update.

In addition to that, websites that don’t provide high-quality, relevant content can lose featured snippets. This will negatively impact a lot of businesses since featured snippets are responsible for delivering a great deal of organic traffic. 

 2. Google’s May 2022 Core Update Impact on “Video Content”

Marketers have been talking about video content as the future of digital marketing for ages now. However, video isn’t always the best when it comes to content consumption. 

Due to time and internet speed limitations, it is sometimes easier to skim through written content such as a blog post for a quick and short answer to a specific question. 

Nonetheless, Google has a different take on the matter. Its latest May 2022 core update led to video websites improving their ranking by as much as 25%. 

So, if you are not already including video in your content strategy, you will be missing out on more website traffic, lead volumes, and revenue. 

3. Google’s May 2022 Core Update Impact on “Specialized Content”

Content specialization is one of the highlights of Google’s May 2022 core update. Websites displaying general content, such as news publishers trying to rank for everything, lost on average 4% of their Google rankings. 

While websites offering specialized content, serving a niche market, improved their online visibility significantly. The lesson here is to know your segment and establish authority in your industry, and you will be rewarded with improved organic reach. 

 4. “Search intent” is the Name of the Game

The phrase “search intent” is used to define the aim of Google searches. It’s the reason why someone searches for something specific. After all, everyone who conducts a google search expects to find something useful.

For example, if someone searches for the phrase “digital marketing”, he can be looking for a digital marketing agency, an informative article about digital marketing, or any other intent.

One of the keys to making it in the new Google search algorithm; is to focus on providing real value and relevance in content. Therefore, some SEO specialists agreed that Google ranked sites based on how well they matched users’ search intent. Ultimately, the results of these searches are part of the users’ online experience, and that is what Google cares about the most.

For instance, we noticed that one of Mash World’s clients, for whom we optimized the website content for search intent, had a peek in his website traffic as soon as Google completed its update, as shown in the chart below:

 

In Conclusion, High-Quality Specialized Content is King

Google’s May 2022 core update impacted snippets, focused on video optimizing, and paid great attention to specialized content that is optimized for search intent. 

Google has made it clear that publishing high-quality content is a must for achieving better rankings and overall online visibility. Therefore, investing in great SEO content with a narrow scope of topics is the starting point to boosting your traffic.   

If you are interested to talk about how you can upgrade your content to improve your SEO efforts, feel free to reach out to us for a consultation session. Click here to get in touch!

 

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash