On Friday we covered many people starting to see ranking changes in Google and then again, over the weekend we said this was a massive update but I said it didn't seem likely it was Penguin.
Well, Google finally confirmed this morning that there was a core ranking change but unrelated to Penguin - as we expected.
It broke this morning with Zineb from Google posting in French:
@RaphSEO @korleon38 @abondance_com @seof1 pas de nom. Il s'agit simplement d'une de fréquentes quality updates.
— Zineb Ait (@Missiz_Z) January 12, 2016That means there was no name [for the update]. It is simply one of frequent quality updates.
Gary Illyes confirmed the translation and what happened:
@jenstar yes, the changes you saw are part of a core algo update. @Missiz_Z is right almost always, you shan't need my confirmation
— Gary Illyes (@methode) January 12, 2016And John Mueller did also:
@dawnieando It's not penguin; not "confirmed-ish" just "confirmed" :-).
— John Mueller (@JohnMu) January 12, 2016Basically, all that mocking of our reports of a massive Google update, well - it was something big but Google won't say more than a "core update."
We had several core updates that Google has confirmed in the past, so this is one of the rare ones that Google has indeed confirmed.
