Google: Core Updates Are Not About Bad Links

Most of you know this already but Gary Illyes from Google said the other day at PubCon that cleaning up your link profile will not help you recover from a core update. He was quoted as saying this by numerous people during his PubCon talk on Tuesday.

Here are those tweets:

Core algorithm updates no likely about links. In fact Gary says “forget about that” #Pubcon

— John Morabito (@JohnMorabitoSEO) October 8, 2019

Cleaning up your link profile won’t help with a core update. @methode #pubcon

— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) October 8, 2019

Core updates are not about links and not something specific to your site, as Google has said numerous times. Google said it is about Google thinking there is something more relevant to rank for the query.

Here is how Gary put it:

I think the message got lost: if you’re “hit” by a core update, you shouldn’t think of it as a penalty. You might not be doing anything wrong at all, it might just be that someone is doing something better.
(imma mute this thread fyi)

— Gary “鯨理” Illyes (@methode) October 9, 2019

John then responded as well:

A part is that sometimes feasibility of business models changes. If it’s the Ultimate Keyword Metatag Generator Corp, and it stops showing at #1 for [improve site ranking], no amount of “tweaking/fixing” will make it relevant, if it overall isn’t as relevant anymore. Times change

— ???? John ???? (@JohnMu) October 10, 2019

Here is the outline from what Gary said about these core updates from his talk:

Core update tips:
– don’t focus on core updates
– Google is just fine tuning algorithms to offer more relevant & higher quality content
– doesn’t mean your content sucks
– another page/site whose content is higher quality & more relevant to users’ queries @methode #pubcon pic.twitter.com/LNJEnwyahr

— Lily Ray (@lilyraynyc) October 8, 2019

Forum discussion at Twitter.