Possible Google Search Ranking Update on 11th January | W2 January 2022

Another week, another round of SEO news. Here’s a quick breakdown of this week’s news. 

• Possible Google Search ranking update on 11th January?
• Google still says to disavow whole domains if necessary
• Google: Links have to be on indexed pages to be counted and not all indexed links are counted
• Google page experience update coming to desktop soon

So, let’s get started.

12/1/2022- Possible Google Search ranking update on 11th January? 

A lot of people and tracking tools picked up what looked to be an unconfirmed Google Search Ranking update on 11th January.

There was a fair bit of chatter on SEO forums where people said they saw some big changes in their rankings and traffic over the day. Some reported some good news such as their rankings going up but others weren’t so lucky and experienced the opposite. 

Tracking tools also tracked some big movements on the day itself. 

There’s no confirmation on whether there was an update but I hope Google can be a bit more forthcoming about things like this happening.

10/1/2022- Google says to disavow whole domains if necessary

Google’s John Mueller said to “disavow the whole domain if you know there’s an issue with some of its links. No need to be exact when everything on a site is bad from your POV.”

Keep in mind that Google has mentioned that they’ve seen the disavow tool hurt sites because they’re used too freely. Some people end up disavowing links that were actually helping them. If you disavow an entire domain where the links aren’t helping you, it’s fine but if you disavow a single link that was helping you, it’s going to hurt.\

13/1/2022- Google: Links have to be on indexed pages to be counted and not all indexed links are counted

Someone asked on Twitter if a link that is toxic is counted if the page that link is on, is not in Google’s index.

John Mueller replied that “If they’re not indexed, I wouldn’t assume the links do anything.”

John then explained two important points:
(1) Links that are on indexed pages can be ignored by Google anyway.
(2) There is no API for testing if a page is indexed

John explained that there is no way for a tool to know if a page is indexed “without breaking our TOS.” Of course, most of the tools break the TOS anyway, and Google looks the other way.

14/1/2022- Google Page Experience Update coming to desktop soon

The Google Page Experience Update is coming to a Google search ranking algorithm soon.

Here is a chart of the factors included in this update compared side by side with desktop to mobile:

For the desktop page experience update this includes:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
• First Input Delay (FID)
• HTTPS Security
• Absence of intrusive interstitials

Google also said to not worry about this update impacting rankings although people are still skeptical