Google: Core Updates Are Not About Bad Links

Oct 10, 2019 - 8:18 am 50 by

Google Clean Up

Most of you know this already but Gary Illyes from Google said the other day at PubCon that cleaning up your link profile will not help you recover from a core update. He was quoted as saying this by numerous people during his PubCon talk on Tuesday.

Here are those tweets:

Core updates are not about links and not something specific to your site, as Google has said numerous times. Google said it is about Google thinking there is something more relevant to rank for the query.

Here is how Gary put it:

John then responded as well:

Here is the outline from what Gary said about these core updates from his talk:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: June 30, 2025

Jun 30, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Supports Fewer Structured Data, Not More Like Promised

Jun 30, 2025 - 7:51 am
Bing Ads

Microsoft Removed Over One Billion Ads & 475,000 Advertiser Accounts

Jun 30, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Tests AI Mode In Chrome Search Bar (Desktop & Android)

Jun 30, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

PSA: Fan Out Queries Are Not In Google Search Console

Jun 30, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google Ads

New Google Ads Broad Match Experiments Testing

Jun 30, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google: All You Need Is Google's Link Tool, Not Third-Party Tools