January 2020 was full of Google updates that affected ranking across many industries. With January being the first month that people are back in the office after the holidays, there typically are more people searching for industrial products or services. Within January, there were two big changes that Google made: a core Google algorithm update and a change to the featured snippet position number.

January 2020’s Google’s Core Algorithm Update 

The biggest change was by far the Google core algorithm change. This change takes place a few times a year but causes huge search engine ranking fluctuations. This means that if you were to search the same query at different times throughout the day, the results would vary wildly. When this happens, it indicates that Google is changing the requirements to rank well.

Mobile vs Desktop Affect from Core Google Algorithm Update

Google is still remaining mysterious and not revealing what the core algorithm was about, but we know that it affected mobile and desktop differently. For desktop, the top affected categories, in this order, were online communities, games, news, arts & entertainment, and finance. On mobile, games, news, online communities, arts & entertainment, and finance, in that order, were the top categories affected. So, mobile and desktop had the same categories affected but in a different order of volatility.

How to Withstand Algorithm Changes

The E.A.T. strategy for content is the best way to withstand algorithm changes, no matter if they are core updates or regular updates that Google makes. E.A.T. stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. If you can improve your site’s content to reflect these qualities, you should see your rankings stay consistent during algorithm changes. Google has previously stated that content is king and that E.A.T. is a method they stand behind again and again.

Featured Snippet Update 2020 

The featured snippet update that occurred in January affected the position title and frequency of your SERP position. Before this update, your URL would show up twice if you had the featured snippet but also ranked well. This was because the featured snippet was considered position zero. After the update, these snippets are now considered position one. This means that if your listing has the featured snippet, your URL will no longer be featured twice.

The upside of this is that if you have another relevant page for the same query, this will give it the opportunity to show at the same time as your URL with the featured snippet. The downside of this update is that featured snippets usually answer the question right on Google rather than making users click into the page. This further pushes for zero click searches that don’t result in your site reaping the benefits of ranking for the featured snippet.

How Have These Google Algorithm Updates Affected Your Site?

With the core update and the featured snippet position update, January 2020 was a month of big changes on Google. Core algorithm changes cause huge fluctuations in the search results. These changes can either help improve your ranking or tank them, depending on what the algorithm changes were. By utilizing the E.A.T strategy for content, your site should be able to withstand these changes and not be affected too much by these algorithm updates.

Contact Ecreative today to see how your site could be improved to withstand Google’s future algorithm changes.