Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that when it comes to Google Search ranking algorithm updates - there is no need to work on those SEO issues over weekends or the holidays. He said Google's "algorithms tend to focus more on the long term." "So it doesn't really make sense to "urgently" change a site overall for them," he added. John Mueller said with these updates "you don't need to work non-stop over the weekend/holidays."
This concern came up when I wrote again about the massive Google ranking fluctuations this week. SEOs have been sharing this tweet over and over again about not working on the holidays, that SEO is not life or death and that you need to get your work/life balance in shape. My story was quoted in this share:
This sounds incredibly unhealthy:
— Eoghan (@rebelytics) December 20, 2021
"There is just so much going on right now in Google Search for an SEO that taking off for Christmas might not be an option for many."https://t.co/81ggkpfR3U pic.twitter.com/nJ3EHmLBvv
John added "It's much better to take a few steps back and review the bigger picture. There's no race, you don't need to work non-stop over the weekend/holidays." It is critical when the mistake is on your end, a server or technical issue on your site. But when Google makes the change on their end, there is nothing urgent for you to do - well, despite watch your rankings drop.
Here are those tweets:
The only times things are time-critical are when there are severe technical issues, like the server is down, the site is hacked, you added noindex everywhere, or added a broken robots.txt file. Those are your problems to fix, not changes on Google's side though.
— 🫕 John 🫕 (@JohnMu) December 21, 2021
As I covered before here are some of the recently confirmed updates:
- December 2021 product reviews update on December 1st through December 21st
- November 2021 local search update on November 30 through December 8th
- 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.
To be clear, Google did these, not you but your site may be impacted in a negative or positive way. I will add that the Google search results tracking tools have calmed down a bit today - which is good.
Like I said before, I hope you don't have stress over your SEO job over the holidays and I guess you can point your client to John Mueller's tweet that there is nothing to rush to get done here. Truth is, if you get hit by a core update, that can take several months to fix - so rushing isn't going to help.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
