News, Articles & Knowledge

At the start of April, Google announced the release of a new algorithm update specifically targeting product reviews. The aim of this update is to improve the quality of content available and help define the most “useful and helpful information possible”, to quote the Google Search Central Blog.

Wycliffe’s motto is ‘Bold and Loyal’, and we couldn’t be prouder to have been chosen to help them achieve their ongoing business objectives through digital marketing.

Read on to find out why we were chosen and how our dedicated team will help the college to stand out even more in their community as a leader in private education.

What Is The Google Core Algorithm Update?

You may be aware that, on 3 December 2020, Google released an update to its core algorithm. It is thought that this was a big, global broad core update, more extensive even than the previous core update rolled out earlier this year in May. 

For some time now Google Chrome and other browsers like Safari have been rolling out updates which have been increasing the restrictions placed on third party cookies, and even first party cookies to a degree. Safari was one the first to bring in these changes (on a large scale), but they also have less to lose from these kinds of restrictions. And Microsoft Edge, we don’t really care about (we’ll let you look this up).

Soon things are about to change, drastically! Google Chrome is going to start to ‘phase out’ third party cookies, natively. The intention is to do this within two years; however, changes could come sooner.  But what effect will this have on marketers and where will this leave adtech companies which are solely reliant on these cookies to function?

Google have announced that if your page has been listed as a featured snippet on a search result page, then it will no longer also appear as a standard blue link on the first page.

How this will impact your page's rank?

According to the news from BBC many sites around the world (including the very well-known ones) may stop functioning properly today (the 4th of March 2020). This is due to the fact one of the main organisations issuing certificates, called ‘Let’s Encrypt’, made an announcement only yesterday that three million of these should be revoked straight away due to a bug problem.