To the relief of every SEO agency in Toronto, in Canada, and across North America, Google’s Page Experience Update is now complete. The search engine announced the milestone from its Google Search Central Twitter account on September 2, marking the end of an unusually volatile period for search engine rankings. Below, we’ll recap the last several months in changes.

In April, Google launched the ‘product reviews update,’ which aimed to elevate websites that provide rich, useful product reviews over those with ‘thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.’

In June, Google launched a two-part ‘spam update,’ a continuation of the company’s ongoing anti-spam efforts. It also launched the June Core Update, with another to follow in July. Core updates are those that apply ‘significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems,’ the search engine explained in 2019. Core updates often cause larger-than-usual ranking fluctuations.

In August, Google launched the ‘link spam update,’ which aimed to identify and disavow low-quality and spammy links. As a result, websites using bad links for SEO purposes suffered in the rankings. It also announced that it was gradually changing how it displayed page titles in search results, with less emphasis placed on HTML title tags.

Starting in June, the largest update of them all, the Page Experience Update, also began rolling out. Google first announced the update in May 2020, an unusual move considering the search engine rarely provides any warning of an update, let alone a full year. The goal of the Page Experience Update mirrored the goals of each of the other updates: to prioritize great user experiences over technical SEO agency literacy. Having great metadata, h-tag structure, etc. is still – and will always be – crucial. But site speed, mobile friendliness, content, and other user experience indicators are becoming even more important.

As a Google Partner search engine marketing and SEO agency, GrowthEngine Media has a sophisticated understanding of Google’s preferred practices and is ideally positioned to help you company get found in search results. Reach out today to learn more.

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