Google’s John Mueller said Google “primarily” announces search updates to provide “transparency for site owners.” He added that when Google publishes blog posts, updates policies, and help center documentation, that is an actionable announcement site owners could use.
Shahram Rahbari asked:
When Google names an update publicly (like “August spam update” or a core update), is that meant to give site owners any actionable signal at the page or site level, or is it purely a timing/transparency notice with no specific action expected from webmasters?
John Mueller replied on Bluesky saying:
This is primarily transparency for site owners. If there’s something actionable for site owners to do, we’ll publish that in our policies, help center, documentation, and blog independently — usually well in advance of any changes in our systems.
This is exactly what Google did this morning with the site reputation abuse policy change for the EEA. They wrote a blog post, updated the documentation and gave us advance notice of the change. Google does this for bigger changes.
And to take it a step further, Google does not announce all updates, not even smaller core updates.
So most updates do not get announced, many updates do get announced but there is no new actionable information for Google to give site owners and finally, even more rarely, Google will pre-announce updates and give actionable advice to site owners.
Forum discussion at Bluesky.
