Google's Gary Illyes: Hit by a "core update," Don't Think Penalty

[engine]

Google's Gary Illyes was talking about people hit by a "core" update and indicated that if you are hit, you may not be doing anything wrong: Others are doing better.

I think the message got lost: if you're "hit" by a core update, you shouldn't think of it as a penalty. You might not be doing anything wrong at all, it might just be that someone is doing something better.

[twitter.com...]

[goodroi]

What I hear ... most sites but not all websites would benefit buy worrying less about patching the small holes in their ranking power bucket, and worried more about pouring bigger positive signals into their ranking power bucket. Create better content with strong on page signals that generate quality backlinks, good user metrics & social love.

The sites that have real penalties that need to be removed are smart enough to know they were abusing Google and are smart enough to not blindly follow Gary's advice.