Google really took the phrase ‘New Year, New Me’ to heart because they finished off the year strong with back-to-back core algorithm updates and they even decided to throw a separate spam update into the mix. Let’s dive into the three main updates Google rolled out in the last two months of the year and the impact they may have on your law firm’s website.

November 2024 Core Algorithm Update

The November 2024 Core Algorithm Update started rolling out on November 11th and finished up 23 days later on December 5th. The last core update before this one was in August, and before August, one occurred back in March.

In typical Google fashion, not much was said about this update. The only statement from Google was: “This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.” It’s worth noting that Google made the same statement about both the August and March Core Algorithm Updates.

What this means is that your law firm needs to continue to prioritize consistently producing high-quality content that your target audience would find useful. When writing, be sure to focus on EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) which helps establish your firm and your attorneys as thought leaders. Google has also prioritized the freshness of content, so don’t be afraid to update and/or refresh older or outdated content. At 9Sail, we focused on refreshing outdated content for a client and they saw clicks to their website quadruple.

December 2024 Core Algorithm Update

The December 2024 Core Algorithm Update started on December 12th, just a few days after the November Core Algorithm finished rolling out, and finished rolling out 6 days later on December 18th.

When people were questioning why there was another Core Update just a week after one finished rolling out, Google responded by saying, “If you’re wondering why there’s a core update this month after one last month, we have different core systems we’re always improving.” This, again, is very vague, which is why during times of algorithm updates, it’s important to keep a close eye on your law firm’s website analytics to see if your site has been impacted negatively or positively.

December 2024 Spam Update

Google will often do periodic refreshes to their spam update. For example, the last spam update took place in June. The purpose of these updates is to improve the quality of search results by:

• Penalizing websites that use deceptive tactics;
• Promoting high-quality content; and
• Maintaining a fair and trustworthy search environment.

The December spam update started on December 19th and took one week to finish rolling out. The update was intended to penalize some of the spam techniques that are against Google’s spam policies. With that said, it was confirmed that this update was not targeting link spam and site reputation abuse.

If you are concerned about this update or noticed a decrease in traffic unrelated to the holidays, review the Google Spam Policies and double-check that your site is not violating any of the policies. If it is, be sure to fix the issue and note that it can take many months to recover after being penalized by a spam update.

Are More Google Updates Coming?

Google’s Core Algorithm updates used to occur a couple of times a year. However, representatives from Google have admitted that Google Core Updates are expected to happen more frequently as we saw with the November and December updates occurring back to back. With that said, not only are these updates happening more frequently, but they are also taking much longer to roll out than in prior years. For example, these core updates are usually supposed to take two weeks to finish rolling out, and this year the average amount of time for these algorithm updates to finish rolling out was 23 days.

This makes your SEO strategy all the more important, and having a dedicated partner in your corner that is monitoring these Google updates regularly to ensure your law firm’s website has not been impacted is crucial. Even if it has been impacted, your SEO partner can help identify what aspects have been affected and provide a strategy on how to regain the lost traffic.

If you are looking for a legal SEO partner, then reach out to the 9Sail team today and see how we can help grow your firm.