The State of Search: August Algorithm Tweaks

This month, sensors picked up large ranking shifts in the Google search results on August 2, followed by slight shifts around August 18 and more significant volatility around August 29-30, as displayed in the screenshot below. While algorithm updates were not confirmed by Google during the month of August, these were likely small changes and tweaks made to Google’s recent core algorithm updates.

Some industry experts believe that these unconfirmed updates may pertain to time spent on a site page and encourage webmasters to focus on ways to keep users on sites longer. Other experts emphasize backlink health after seeing upticks from client sites with recently updated disavow files. However, it is still too soon to determine what exactly Google has changed in its algorithm.

What does this mean for you?

Our team is evaluating the impact on your sites and will report on any major shifts in the rankings. In the meantime, we recommend continuing to focus on improving page quality and E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) signals across site pages, as recommended in our June State of Search update.