In the most recent Search Off The Record podcast, John Mueller, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt debate about if and what they should share when it comes to the Google core updates.
It seems like Gary Illyes wants Google to share more specifics about what each update does so SEOs can act on it, but if not, stop announcing them all together. At least that is how I understood what he was saying.
John Mueller said SEOs still want confirmation that what they are seeing, even if it is obviously an update, is indeed confirmed by someone at Google.
The conversation on this topic starts around 11 minutes into the podcast:
John leads Gary with "So, Gary, are we announcing core updates?" In which Gary responds "We seem to announce score updates" Martin then asks Gary "are you happy with the way that we're doing it?" In which Gary said "I don't know how to give an answer to that without getting fired." Clearly, Gary has some strong opinions on this topic, which he did say right after "so I have very strong feelings about core updates in general."
He said that "our team generally knows what we are doing when we are doing core updates or what the things in the core updates do, more specifically." Gary then explains that most of the time it is the advice Google has been handing out for years, Gary said "in the vast majority of the cases, the things are just focusing on the guidelines that we've been publishing for the past 20 years. So basically, write good content, right, don't buy links, whatever, I don't know. So every single time we do one of these core updates, we are basically saying that... follow our guidelines, and that's also our advice."
But Gary added that "if you are affected by these updates or if you want to learn more about it." But what Google says is the same thing "here's the Webmaster guidelines that you can check out or this post that is based on the Webmaster guidelines that you can check out." "So then why are we publicizing the core updates?" He said it is "obvious that there was an update," "So I don't know what's the benefit of having communication about the core updates when we can say more about them," he added. If Google can't say more, then Gary thinks say nothing. But does Gary feel Google should say more?
Gary said "if we could give more guidance or more information about what's in an update or how... Or what kind of site it's affecting or content it's affecting, then I would be all for it, but at the moment we cannot. And at the moment, we are just saying that: "Hello, there was a core update or incoming core update in two hours." And then four weeks later, we are like: "Yeah, we are finished with this core update."
Clearly, it seems Gary wants Google to be more transparent about the specific Google core updates and what they are doing.
In any event, the conversation is an interesting one to listen to, it is from about 11 minutes in through 20 minutes.
Glenn Gabe also understood this like I did:
This is awesome, I hope it can happen :) @methode about broad core update communication: He would like provide *more info* about each core update, but doesn't sound like everyone is on board at Google (to provide more insight about the changes w/updates): https://t.co/QUONfuGnrV pic.twitter.com/kzeR8Cky4V
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 11, 2022
Forum discussion at Twitter.
