Google November 2021 Core Update Rolling Out Later Today

Nov 17, 2021 - 9:04 am 29 by
Filed Under Google Updates

Google Core Update

Right before the big Thanksgiving Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday season Google decided to flip the switch and roll out a core update. Google just announced that it will begin rolling out later today the November 2021 Core Update. Google has updated us that the update started to roll out at about 11am ET on November 17, 2021.

Yes, I am surprised it is rolling out just a week or so before Thanksgiving and it will continue to likely take two weeks to roll out, which means it will roll out during Black Friday and Cyber Monday online shopping.

As I wrote this morning, I expected Google to wait until at least December to roll it out.

To be fair, you'd likely see the impact within a few days, as Danny Sullivan of Google said with previous core updates - see tweet below. But still, if you stocked up on inventory and hired staff for the sales surge coming up next week - and you lost those rankings tomorrow or in the next few days - you are in a pickle:

I am also surprised the Google Search Central account announced it and not the Search Liaison account. John Mueller said it fit the Search Central account better:

Just yesterday, Google said it does not know when the next core update will be released... Funny, right?

Again, I am shocked and so are others:

And yes, this will take a couple weeks to roll out and you won't necessarily see those changes on this morning. But it will roll out during the shopping season - but like I said above, you probably will see the bulk of the force (or lack thereof) of this update within the next few days.

Update, it is now rolling out at about 11am ET:

John added:

Google has said before it would not release updates before this holiday season. Google said in 2020 it won't release a core update before the holidays, Matt Cutts said in 2013 they try to minimize updates before/during holidays and even Panda updates took a break for the holidays.

Danny Sullivan from Google responded to these concerns - I won't add my commentary to his response:

The previous core update we had was July 2021 and then a month prior to that with the June core update. The one before that was 6 months before the June update, on December 3, 2020 named the December 2020 core update. Before that was 7 month gap where on May 4, 2020, the May 2020 core update. The one prior to that was on January 13, 2020, the January 2020 core update and the one before that was on September 24, 2019, the September 2019 core update. Oh, before that was on June 3, 2019, the June 2019 core update and I can go on and on.

Are you surprised?

Update: I made several updates to this story over the day, here is Danny Sullivan from Google with a bit more on the timing:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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