Stop Chasing Algorithm Updates

Google announces an update and within hours - sometimes within minutes, because some people have set up alerts for this sort of thing - SEO Twitter explodes into a frenzy of analysis and speculation: everyone is analyzing volatility data, comparing ranking changes, theorizing about what Google changed, arguing about whose theory is correct, and generating takes at a rate that would be impressive if any of it were useful.

"It looks like they're targeting thin content." "No, it's clearly about links." "I think it's user experience signals." "You're all wrong, it's obviously about E-E-A-T." The theories multiply like rabbits in spring, blog posts get published before the data has even settled, podcast episodes get recorded while the hosts are still refreshing their dashboards, and agencies send clients alarming emails about "what this update means for you" that are really just excuses to schedule a call and bill some hours.

And here's the thing that nobody wants to admit because admitting it would undermine an entire cottage industry built around update analysis: almost none of it matters, not in any way that would actually change what you should be doing with your time.

The Futility of Update Chasing

Chasing algorithm updates is seductive in the way that all forms of procrastination disguised as productivity are seductive, but it's ultimately pointless for a constellation of reasons that become obvious once you think about them clearly.

You can't know what actually changed, because Google doesn't tell you, and the patterns people observe are often noise misinterpreted as signal, and with millions of ranking changes happening simultaneously across billions of queries you can find evidence for almost any theory if you look hard enough, which is exactly what people do, constructing elaborate post-hoc narratives that feel satisfying but explain nothing.

Even if you could know, you can't respond fast enough, because by the time you've analyzed the update, theorized about changes, developed a response plan, gotten it approved by stakeholders, and actually implemented the changes, Google has already made dozens more updates, which means you're always reacting to yesterday's algorithm while optimizing for tomorrow's search results, a temporal mismatch that guarantees you'll always be slightly behind.

Tactical responses rarely help because algorithm updates usually aren't about specific tactics that you can counter with specific counter-tactics - they're about better evaluating quality and relevance in ways that are deliberately designed to be difficult to game, and you can't game quality with quick fixes any more than you can fake being tall by standing on your tiptoes.

Your response might make things worse, because panic changes based on incomplete understanding have a remarkable tendency to backfire, and you might end up "fixing" things that weren't actually problems while ignoring the things that were, making your situation worse through the very action you took to make it better.

The Update Circus

The algorithm update cycle has become an industry unto itself, a self-sustaining ecosystem of tools and analysts and thought leaders who have discovered that they can build entire careers around analyzing something that is fundamentally unknowable, which is a neat trick if you can pull it off.

Tools track "volatility" - how much rankings are changing - and when volatility goes up everyone gets excited, as if the mere fact that things are changing tells you anything useful about what's changing or why or whether it matters for your specific situation, which it doesn't, because knowing that something is happening is entirely different from knowing what that something is.

Analysts publish "winners and losers" lists, breathlessly reporting who gained from the update and who lost, but these lists are often based on small samples and unreliable data, and the "losers" might have lost for reasons completely unrelated to the update - maybe they had a technical problem, maybe a competitor launched something better, maybe it was just normal fluctuation - while the "winners" might have just been fixing old problems that would have helped regardless of any update.

Thought leaders publish takes - "My theory on the Helpful Content Update," "What I think Google is really targeting," "The hidden signal everyone is missing" - but these theories are unfalsifiable by design, and you can't prove them wrong, which means you also can't prove them right, which means they're educated guesses presented as insights, speculation dressed up in the language of analysis. (Remember: Google's messaging is PR, not documentation.)

All of this activity creates the appearance of understanding without actual understanding - it fills the content calendar, it generates engagement, it gives everyone something to talk about on Twitter - but it rarely helps anyone rank better, which you'd think would be the point but apparently isn't.

The Constant Change Reality

Google makes thousands of changes to search every year - thousands! - and most of them aren't announced, and many of them are small enough that you'd never notice unless you were looking for them specifically, and the constant tinkering means that any specific update is just one moment in a continuous evolution that never stops and never will, a river you can never step in twice because it's a different river every time you approach it.

The named updates - "Helpful Content Update," "Product Reviews Update," "Core Update" - get attention because they're named, because Google decided to announce them, because there's a press release to quote and a date to reference, but unnamed changes might be just as significant or even more significant, and you can't track them all, and you can't respond to them all, so why would you think you could respond meaningfully to the ones that happen to have names?

The algorithm is always changing, which means every day is an update day, which means optimizing for any single update is like trying to time individual waves while ignoring the tide - you might catch one wave perfectly but you'll be completely unprepared for the next one, and the next one, and the one after that, forever.

What The Best Sites Do Differently

The sites that consistently perform well - the ones that rank through update after update, that weather volatility without panic, that seem almost immune to the chaos that afflicts everyone else - don't chase updates, because they understand something that the update-chasers don't: they focus on fundamentals that transcend any particular algorithm change, truths about quality and usefulness that were true in 2005 and will still be true in 2035.

They create content that genuinely helps, not content designed to hit SEO checkboxes or satisfy some imagined algorithmic preference, but content that users actually want and actually read and actually share with other people, which is evergreen because Google's ultimate goal is serving users and always has been and always will be, no matter how many updates they roll out.

They build real authority, not through link schemes that might get caught in the next update or the one after that, but through actual recognition from legitimate sources who link to them because they're genuinely worth linking to - the kind of authority that grows over time and compounds on itself and doesn't depend on any specific algorithm or any specific understanding of what Google is currently prioritizing.

They maintain technical health, keeping their sites fast and mobile-friendly and properly structured in ways that work well regardless of how Google happens to weight various signals this quarter, because technical hygiene is always beneficial and never goes out of style, unlike whatever tactical trick is currently making the rounds on Twitter.

They stay calm, and when an update hits and their competitors are panicking and making rash decisions based on incomplete information, they keep executing their strategy, trusting the fundamentals, knowing that the panic will pass and the fundamentals will remain.

The Update Recovery Myth

"Recovering" from an algorithm update is largely a myth, a comforting fiction that lets you believe you were doing something right and Google broke it, when more often - much more often than anyone wants to admit - Google just got better at identifying issues that always existed, issues you could have identified yourself if you'd been willing to look at your own site with honest eyes instead of the rose-tinted glasses of the person who built it.

If your site lost rankings in an update, the solution usually isn't to figure out what the update specifically targeted so you can counter-optimize against it - the solution is to honestly assess whether your site deserves to rank, which is a much harder and more uncomfortable question that requires confronting truths you might prefer to avoid.

Is your content actually the best answer to the queries you're targeting, or is it just adequate? Do real experts create or review your content, or did you hire the cheapest freelancer you could find? Would users be genuinely satisfied if they landed on your page, or would they hit the back button and try someone else? Is there anything sketchy about your link profile that you've been hoping Google wouldn't notice?

These questions don't require understanding the update - they require honesty about your site's quality, which is harder than understanding any algorithm could ever be.

Sites that "recover" from updates usually do so by genuinely improving, not by reverse-engineering what changed and deploying some clever counter-measure - the improvement would have helped regardless of the specific update, because the improvement addressed a real problem rather than a theoretical algorithmic preference.

The Attention Economy of Updates

Algorithm updates get attention because they're events, and events create content opportunities, and breaking news gets clicks, and analysis posts get shared - it's a perfect storm of incentives that guarantees every update will receive far more attention than it deserves while the boring fundamentals that actually matter get ignored because they don't generate engagement.

But the attention given to updates is wildly disproportionate to their actionable value, and most practitioners - probably including you, if you're being honest - would be far better served by spending one hour improving content instead of one hour reading update analysis, one hour doing outreach instead of one hour theorizing about link devaluation, one hour analyzing competitors instead of one hour tracking volatility data.

The time spent on update chasing has an opportunity cost that nobody wants to talk about because talking about it would undermine the entire industry built around update analysis - that time could go toward activities that actually improve performance, activities that would help you regardless of what Google does next, activities that compound over time instead of becoming obsolete the moment the next update drops.

A Better Approach

Here's how to think about updates instead, a framework that's less exciting than tracking volatility but actually useful:

Monitor your own data - did your traffic change significantly? If not, the update doesn't concern you, full stop, regardless of how much noise is being made about it on Twitter. If it did change, investigate your specific situation rather than reading generic takes that may or may not apply to your case.

Evaluate against first principles rather than trying to reverse-engineer what Google did - Google wants to show the best results, so are you the best result for your target queries? If yes, eventual success is likely no matter what updates roll out. If no, fix that, regardless of any update, because being the best result is the only strategy that works reliably over time.

Make changes based on evidence, not theories - if you're going to change something, have specific evidence that it's a problem, not speculation based on someone's theory about what Google might have targeted. "The update might have targeted X" is not evidence. "Users bounce quickly from this page and don't convert" is evidence.

Think in quarters, not days, because single days and weeks fluctuate for reasons that have nothing to do with algorithm updates, and individual updates might temporarily hurt or help in ways that reverse themselves within weeks, but over quarters and years quality tends to win, which means you need to zoom out far enough to see the forest instead of obsessing over individual trees.

The Unpopular Truth

If you lost rankings in an update, you probably deserved to - not always, because Google isn't perfect and mistakes happen, but usually, more often than you want to believe, because Google's updates generally improve result quality even when they feel unfair to the people who got hit, and if they improved quality and you lost, that tells you something about your site that you might not want to hear but probably need to.

This is uncomfortable, I know - it's so much easier to blame the algorithm than to acknowledge issues with your own site, to construct elaborate theories about what Google got wrong rather than asking what you might have gotten wrong - but blaming the algorithm doesn't help you improve, and honest self-assessment does, even when it hurts, especially when it hurts.

The best SEO strategy is one that doesn't need to change with every algorithm update. Build something genuinely valuable and the updates become noise instead of existential threats.

Stop chasing. Start building. That's the only strategy that consistently wins.