Google’s May 2022 Core Update is live

Google Search has begun rolling out the first major core update of the year, the May 2022 Major Core Update. It began on May 25, 2022 at approximately 11:30 AM ET and will now roll out over the next few weeks.

So far we are seeing many signs that this May 2022 core update has started strong. Overnight, many of the tracking tools (not all yet) have noticed a lot of volatility in Google search results. Also, the chatter that starts this morning is really picking up. The chatter varied from comments such as “Oh no, a Google core update has been announced” to “Oh no, my website has fallen sharply in the rankings”. I’ve embedded and quoted much of that early chatter below, along with what the tools show. I can update some of the tools when they update later in the morning.

Google May 2022 Broad Core Update Quick Facts

Here are the most important things we know right now, in brief:

Surname: Google May 2022 Broad Core Update

Launched: May 25, 2022 at approximately 11:30 p.m. ET

roll out: The rollout takes about one to two weeks

Goals: It looks at all types of content

Penalty: It’s not a punishment, it encourages or rewards great websites

Global: This is a global update affecting all regions in all languages.

Influence: Google wouldn’t tell me what percentage of queries or searches were affected by this update.

Discover: Core updates affect Google Discover and other features, including feature snippets and more.

recovered: If you’ve been affected by this, you need to look at your content and see if you can do better with the following advice from Google.

Updates: Google will update this algorithm regularly, but may stop communicating these updates in the future. Maybe that’s what we’ve seen in the past few weeks, or all those unconfirmed Google updates.

Google’s Danny Sullivan (who is on vacation right now probably wrote this last week and someone else posted it, or maybe he did it while on vacation) wrote: “Several times a year we make major improvements to our overall ranking processes We call these core updates. Core updates aim to increase the overall relevance of our search results and make them more helpful and useful to everyone. Today we’re releasing our May 2022 core update. It will take around 1-2 weeks to fully roll out.”

Today we’re releasing a major core update, as we do several times a year. This update is referred to as the May 2022 Core Update. Learn more: https://t.co/7kFklwdkAb

— Google Search Center (@googlesearchc) May 25, 2022

These major core updates are global.

If you were affected by this update, see the Google Core Update Advice Story for more information.

Below is a recap of the initial conversations and data we’re seeing on this update less than 24 hours into the rollout. Keep in mind that we’ll see more over the next few days, but I wanted to share some of the early reports on the impact of this update.

Did Google test this update earlier?

As we reported, there was a broad core update, like updates we’ve seen and talked about since May 16th. Google wouldn’t confirm it, in fact, less than 12 hours before announcing this new major core update, Google’s John Mueller said: “I’m not aware of anything specific. So we’re always working to improve the quality and relevance of search results. It can happen that a website becomes more or less visible over time.”

Google would tell me that what we saw prior to May 25 has nothing to do with these unconfirmed updates, but honestly, that often happens. Maybe Google tested this core update in the wild? Who knows, but we thought what’s been going on for the last week felt a lot like a Google core update.

Google’s John Mueller specifically addressed this phrase: “When we announce core updates, we start rolling out at that point, not before.” Although he deleted that tweet shortly after that core update was announced, I’m not sure why …

Previous Broad Core updates

So yes, the rollout will take a couple of weeks, and it’s been over six months since the last update, the last core update of November 17th, 2021 from November 17th to 30th. The previous core updates before the November update were July 2021 and then a month before that with the June core update. That before that was 6 months before the June update on December 3rd, 2020 called December 2020 Core Update. Before that, there was a 7-month gap where the May 2020 core update was released on May 4, 2020. The one before that was January 13, 2020 Core January 2020 Update and the one before that was September 24, 2019 Core September 2019 Update. Oh, before that was June 3, 2019 Core June 2019 Update and I can go on and on.

SEO Chatter On May 2022 Core Update

Yesterday was slow going, but this morning the chatter got really hot. Here’s some of the talk on the SEO forums and social media about this May 2022 major core update:

With these core updates, remember this rule of thumb… Don’t panic on day one unless you’re completely wiped out. Google claims these will take 2 weeks to fully roll out, but you should feel this update within 48 hours or it won’t affect you at all. Then wait for the dust to settle before analyzing your SERPs. Also watch out for a fix. Sometimes these core updates have adverse effects and Google will see these signals and come back. In a separate note, PDF spam needs to be addressed in this core update, as the November spam update certainly didn’t. Good luck to all

British information site with lots of UGC. Real time currently about 2/3 of what I would normally expect at this time of day. I’m trying not to give in to fear just yet.

So far I’ve noticed a slight bump in traffic, but the keyword bleeding has started again, so no idea where this is going. We’ll see in a few weeks.

Hello, everyone! So from what I can see my blogs have been hit by this core update. Most of them I didn’t use the TOC and they flew away (25% for now), one of them had and is still doing fine with no changes (maybe a slight drop for 5%). So in my opinion you need big articles with a good amount of h2, h3, +FAQ and the chances of you staying in SERP will be bigger.

My website rank went from 4th POS to 10th xterday 🙁 …..

The sites that have experienced swings in their rankings have dropped sharply in ranking, and I have seen many affiliate sites see ranking declines. What kind of changes does the website owner have to pay for to improve the rankings?

Oh yes, just FYI, all my informative keywords are way off page 1, and what am I seeing on page 1 now? Businesses! happy! I think there are no more informative keywords, only commercial ones! happy!

Information page here, significant traffic drops from today, so far about 30% per hour. The keyword rankings also fell in almost all categories. yesterday was good Hopefully they’ll come back like they did in December/January after the other core update.

Hello, here is a similar case. I noticed that I lost 100% of my featured snippets. The special thing is that I either lost the snippet but only slipped to position 2, or I’m still in position 1 and Google no longer has a snippet for this term in the SERPs.

I checked a lot of other sites and some lost 100% of their snippets. I know a few people who saw this in November with no recovery. John Mu, of course, flatly denied that this happened.

Some of my pages have been deleted. 50-80% of keyword rankings are gone. The first page is now filled with horrible spam pages with no useful content (some are even AI generated).

Again, it’s only the first day of the update and it’s still ongoing so we can’t wrap it up just yet as it takes up to 12 days to complete the rollout. However, I am already full of pessimism.

To those who are losing traffic to information-related websites, I will say that I am in a different boat at the moment. My information page grew overnight. Traffic is currently driving what I would normally receive on a day I have received since 9pm to 6am. So that’s a big lift for me.

I’m not sure what the difference is between what I have and what others are doing, but it’s still very early in the game for this update. They’ve only just started and whatever we’re seeing shouldn’t be taken as standard just yet. We need at least 4 to 5 days to see the general direction of this one.

Yes, I’ve started seeing volatility.
I’ve been monitoring core updates very closely. if you have problems with real-time data (Universal Google Analytics)?
My real-time data didn’t match up compared to total audience

— Shiva (@im_gksiva) May 26, 2022

Non-English Medical Publications. (Think webMD) pic.twitter.com/2LzqA6MDl2

— Max Peters (@maxjpeters) May 26, 2022

The same thing

— Molly Youngblood (@mygeigermeister) May 26, 2022

Yes, one of my website pages was at #20, but today it’s floating at #13.

— Aakash Kumar (@itsaakashkumar) May 26, 2022

Huge drop

– Palash Mahmud (@palbela007) May 26, 2022

Interestingly, they all had a small surge between the 22nd and 23rd.

— Max Peters (@maxjpeters) May 26, 2022

On the other hand, I will have a clear view of uptrends or downtrends in 3-4 days.

— 𓂀 Ori Zilbershtein (@OriZilbershtein) May 26, 2022

I can’t share graphics but the night was disastrous for me. My two main blogs have plummeted dramatically. I estimate 80% less income during the night. I don’t want to despair, hopefully the update can fix it. In your experience, are the first moves final?

— EduRS (@MuchoSeo) May 26, 2022