Websites may experience a notable decline in organic traffic after Core Updates without clear patterns in rank changes. A less apparent reason for this is subtle shifts in user intent.
Two outdated models can obscure our understanding of these changes.
First, we often classify user intent as transactional, navigational, informational, and commercial. However, today’s user intent is far more detailed and nuanced.
Second, not all positions in the search results serve the same purpose. Google categorizes the top results into dominant, standard, and minor intent.
Except for long-tail keywords with a clear intent, many keywords can carry multiple interpretations. Take “AI in e-commerce” as an example: some users might be looking for information on how AI is implemented in e-commerce, while others might be interested in how e-commerce is evolving due to AI. These subtle distinctions lead to different user needs.
Consequently, Google presents a diverse mix of results aiming to cover various user intents as comprehensively as possible.
During Core Updates, Google adjusts the search rankings when it detects shifts in user intent. These adjustments can be significant if they affect the dominant intent and the top three results.
In the broader context, minor fluctuations in rankings may seem random and insignificant. But what we’re witnessing is akin to the Butterfly Effect: small changes that can lead to a dramatic impact.
Butterfly Effects from Intent Shifts
Understanding the subtle ranking changes caused by user intent shifts can be challenging without knowing what to look for. These “Butterfly Effects” can result in significant changes in organic traffic following a Core Update. Much of this is due to our often static interpretation of keywords despite topics constantly evolving.
At one end of the spectrum, news-related keywords are filtered through query deserves freshness (QDF), where meanings can shift rapidly. A quick scan of the latest headlines demonstrates how quickly a keyword’s context can change.
On the other end, evergreen keywords tend to maintain consistent meanings over time.
Consider the keyword “ecommerce AI.” Between early February and mid-April, the dominant user intent shifted from “information about AI in e-commerce” to “how AI transforms the e-commerce industry.” Given the rapid pace of AI developments and their evolving impact, it’s a logical shift. As users adapt to new information, their questions and focus change. When the dominant user intent shifts, search result rankings often follow.
The relative weighting of user intent within the SERPs for a given keyword can also change. A dominant intent might become more common, while a common intent could decline to minor status.
These shifts in user intent are why Google says that when an update rolls out, it doesn’t necessarily mean that site owners are doing something wrong. It’s also why there’s often “nothing to fix,” and you can’t quickly “recover” from a Core Update. A particular challenge arises when intent shifts suddenly, causing two URLs to cannibalize each other. This can happen without you even noticing. To uncover these Butterfly Effects, focus on keywords that drop out of the top three positions. Even a slight position drop can significantly impact traffic. You can quantify intent shifts by analyzing the titles of search results before and after the update. While titles aren’t definitive, they offer valuable insights into user intent.
To examine these trends at scale, you can use an LLM (Large Language Model) of your choice to categorize titles with prompts like:
- “Cluster the following titles into one of the following groups: {intent 1}, {intent 2}, {intent 3}, etc.”
- “What might users intend when clicking on the following search result?”
For more popular queries, consider analyzing Google Suggest to see if search volumes are rising or falling. A surge in related keywords could indicate a shift in the primary keyword’s dominant, joint, or minor search intent. However, we can only know some keywords experiencing growing search volume or where Google’s threshold lies for determining a user intent shift. This uncertainty also involves a time element, as some keywords may rapidly change in meaning, like “Independence Day” and “Wuhan.”
Acting on Intent Shifts Once you’ve identified that user intent has shifted for a keyword, you have three options for action:
- Fix potential cannibalization by deleting or consolidating content.
- Rewrite affected articles to align with the new user intent.
- Create new content to address the revised user intent.
Each approach has its merits, depending on the nature of the intent shift and its impact on your content strategy.
Core Updates Are Multi-Faceted
Core Updates involve more than just refining user intent. They’ve become a catch-all for multiple underlying systems. For example, the Helpful Content classifier has been integrated into Core Updates and other quality frameworks like Panda and Penguin, which were merged into Core Updates years ago.
Additionally, Google receives a significant number of new searches every day—around 15% of all queries—which means that the search engine constantly tests and refines its results based on user signals.
These varied influences make Core Updates complex and often unpredictable. However, understanding the different elements and recognizing subtle shifts in user intent can help us transition from uncertainty to actionable solutions. By focusing on these nuances, we can better navigate the intricacies of Core Updates and respond more effectively to changes in organic traffic and search rankings.
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