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On the May 25th 2022, Google announced an important change to their algorithm. This has caused a lot of confusion, and many people don't understand what this means for their websites. So we are going to try and clear things up in this post so you can have a better understanding of what happened and why it's happening.
First things first: What is the purpose of a Google algorithm update? The purpose of an update is to improve user experience on Google. The goal here is not only improve rankings but also make sure that when someone searches for something specific, they get results related to their query instead of getting irrelevant results from other sites that might have managed to spam the engine to the top.
An algorithm update is any change to the way Google's search engine works.
The search engine is constantly evolving, so updates are frequent and often minor.
Updates can be big or small---some affect a large number of users and websites, while others only affect a small percentage of queries.
Updates are usually announced on Google's blog or in other media outlets, but sometimes they aren't announced at all. In this case the announcement was posted here.
In the past, Google has announced these changes ahead of time. For example, in 2017 Google announced that it would begin to penalize sites with intrusive ads and make them harder to find in search results. The company also made updates to increase the prominence of mobile-friendly pages on smartphones and tablets.
Google's May 2022 algorithm update is going to be a big one, but no one knows exactly how it will shake up SEO. As of now, Google has not told us what the new algorithm will contain or how it could affect search traffic and rankings.
The following thread is opened and monitored by Google regarding this new update to directly work with the community:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/164906639
If you have a fantastic site that follows SEO best practices, you should be okay whatever the future holds for Google Search. Just keep on doing what you're doing and don't panic.
If your site has been penalized by Google in the past, it may take some time to get back on track (if ever). It's important that SEOs are able to assess whether their sites are good enough or not before they make changes based on speculation around future updates.
The most important thing is to follow Google's webmaster's guide and keep publishing text that is genuinely useful and unique for your audience. If this means writing about something off-topic but relevant instead of trying to shoehorn in keywords just because there are relevant searches out there, then so be it!
That's it for now, folks. We'll be sure to update this post with any new information as it becomes available, but if you're looking for more info about the May 2022 Google algorithm update, all we can really say is: stay tuned!