As we reported a week ago, we saw a possible Google local search ranking update starting around a week prior to that - well, Google has now confirmed it. Google said on Twitter "our November 2021 local search update has concluded." Google said that this local update began November 30th and ran through December 8th. "It involved a rebalancing of various factors we consider in generating local search results," the search company added.
Here is that tweet:
Our November 2021 local search update has concluded. It began Nov 30 and ran through Dec 8. It involved a rebalancing of various factors we consider in generating local search results. General guidance for businesses remains the same as covered here: https://t.co/uyXFfmUEIR
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 16, 2021
This is a global update:
It is global.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 16, 2021
It was funny, because the day prior, Danny Sullivan of Google said he has nothing to share "yet."
I don't have anything further to share yet.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 15, 2021
Then the next day, he confirmed it:
And now I do. Sorry for the delay. Our confirmation and details are here: https://t.co/ZloyiD8744
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 16, 2021
To be fair, Google missed announcing it and Danny apologized:
We have a lot of updates all the time and don't announce them all. We do try to announce those that are likely to be noticeable. That was a miss in this case; we'll work to do better going forward.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 16, 2021
Google linked to this local SEO document - so it is less similar to the November 2019 local update where Google added neural matching to local queries.
Joy Hawkins named this update the vicinity update, which I think is a good name. She dug into the changes saying that this update was "mainly about proximity." "I believe that this was an update that impacted proximity, making it weight heavier. It may have also devalued the impact of keywords in the business name. I’m seeing uniformly that map packs have shrunk, are way more zoomed in, and are displaying a wider variety of businesses, many of which were invisible before," she added.
Recent Confirmed Google Updates
So let's summarize the confirmed updates we had recently:
- December 2021 product reviews update on December 1st (still rolling out)
- November 2021 core update on November 17th through November 30th
- Google November 2021 spam update on November 3rd
- Google link spam update on July 26th through August 24th
- Google July 2021 core update on July 1st through July 12th
- Google Spam Update Part One on June 28th
- Google Spam Update Part One on June 23rd
- June 2021 core update on June 2nd through June 15th
- Google Predator Update around June 10th
- Google Page Experience Update between June 15th through September 2nd
- Google April 2021 Product reviews update on April 8th
And actually more confirmed ones and plenty of unconfirmed updates.
Keep in mind, the December 2021 product reviews update is still going and we expect it to go through before Christmas.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
