Google Core Updates Can Sometimes Impact Image Search & Local Search

Danny Sullivan of Google confirmed on Twitter that core updates can sometimes impact both image search and local search results. This comes after Danny said that core updates don't impact local results. But now he is saying "it depends" and can impact all content types across search.

This comes after Glenn Gabe wrote a detailed piece on how core updates can impact image search. He showed examples of this happening and then pinged Danny to confirm.

Danny said "Core updates can involve image results or any type of content because they involve our core ranking systems that themselves involve all types of content. That's why our page about them mentions "content" so often."

Core updates can involve image results or any type of content because they involve our core ranking systems that themselves involve all types of content. That's why our page about them mentions "content" so often: https://t.co/nF7Ashb3Zk

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 3, 2021

Then Danny, since he knows how my mind works (working together for so many years), he mentions that he told me before that local search is not impacted by core updates:

At this point, @rustybrick brick is already going "but wait you said core updated don't involve local!" based on my tweet here: https://t.co/bBTeq7Ik2b

And generally doesn't. It typically wouldn't do much. But it could because ... core updates involve our core ranking systems...

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 3, 2021

Hello Rusty Brick Brick .... it depends :)https://t.co/gRKrm8PcPx

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 3, 2021

Then Danny explained how you can tell if a content type was impacted, he said "typically, if you see -- as our post says -- "widely notable effects," that's a sign a core update is playing a role with content." And Glenn pointed out an example from his blog post that shows this as well:

Right, that's exactly what my post is showing. There are several examples in the post that show significant impact in Image Search when the site was also heavily impacted in Web Search. E.g. pic.twitter.com/QK0Zqiy4F7

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 3, 2021

So now you know that core updates can impact the core web results, image results, local results, Discover results and even people also ask and more.

Forum discussion at Twitter.