A Google spokesperson has confirmed with Search Engine Land that Google has not pushed out a new core search update and no infrastructure changes were pushed out around March 2019 core update or the more recent de-indexing bugs that happened last month.
No Google core update. There was some chatter last week of a potential Google algorithm update. Google told us if there was a core update, they would have posted about it on their @searchliaison Twitter account – there was no core update. But yes, Google does have other updates all the time, but there was no substantial update according to Google.
The last core update was that March 2019 core update and Google has not released another since – despite there being rumors there may have been an update afterward.
You can learn more about when Google does updates in this Twitter thread:
Infrastructure update. We asked Google if it updated its infrastructure like it did with the Caffeine infrastructure update from 2010 or the Hummingbird update from 2013. But Google said no, nothing was pushed out around infrastructure here.
New GoogleBot or indexing bugs. Can these fluctuations be a result of the new evergreen GoogleBot released last week? Probably not. Google said this new GoogleBot was released over several months and it was actually being used for 10% of crawling back in November. Google also said the indexing bugs and the new GoogleBot are completely unrelated.
Why we should care. Google is constantly making improvements to their search results. That includes core algorithm updates, infrastructure changes, improved GoogleBot, user interface changes and much more. Google is not going to stop updating.
It is important for SEOs to be on top of these updates but at the same time try to weed out what is a confirmed update and what is not. The recent rumors about there being an update in the past few days can potentially confuse SEOs and doesn’t tend to help our community.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land’s News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.