Google's Rolling Out Their November 2021 Core Update

Article Update: As of 12/30/2021, Google Search Central said via Twitter that the November 2021 Core Update is now Complete.

Google's rolling out a November 2021 core update throughout the holiday shopping season, and the completion date won't be officially announced because they're working on other updates that are interconnected.


The core update started to roll out on November 17, and SEOers are paying close attention to their Google Analytics and Search Console reports to see how their sites may have been affected. And guess what…

According to the research submitted to Search Engine Land, the core update hit fast and hard; here's what data providers saw.

Several data companies tracked Google's search results within the first 24 hours as soon as Google announced the update. They looked at the search engine results pages' volatility to see if sites went up or down in ranking.

The general consensus, however, was that this update hit harder than the July 2021 update.

Here's what Semrush observed. The update was 12% more volatile than July's update. Mobile results were affected more than desktop results by 23%. The health industry was among the hardest hit compared to other sectors on both desktop and mobile website versions by 41%.

Semrush noticed out of the top 20 URLs that ranked prior to the update, 16% had currently ranked worse during this November core update than July's.

RankRanger showed in their analysis an even spread of fluctuation in rankings among the health, finance, and travel niches, but not for retail. They realized that top-ranking retail sites had more ranking fluctuations for the top three and five positions versus the top 10.

Check out that Search Engine Land article to see who else was affected by the November core update and the graphics showing the data behind it.

In the end, their study showed a lot of winners and losers, but the SEO community agrees that this update was extremely impactful and the timing of it a bit concerning.

Review your Google Search Console reports to know if your website's mobile and desktop versions were affected and if you need to optimize them to adapt to Google's core update. Negative ranking signals aren't necessarily the end of the world, especially when Google is constantly tweaking its search engine algorithms.

After all, a drop in rank doesn't mean it's set in stone.

Just review Google's "What Site Owners Should Know About Google's Core Updates" article so you can ask the right questions and understand what may have impacted the website.

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