We analyzed the impact of Google's May 2022 major update to determine what you can learn from the ups and downs in search rankings across industries.

Google releases one or two changes to its algorithms every day; most of them are not noticeable.

And several times a year, Google will officially announce a “major update.”

A core update refers to extensive changes to Google's algorithm and systems that cause noticeable fluctuations in search results.

This article provides an up-to-date summary of the impact of the May 2022 Major Update on industries, search queries, and the search results page.

The winners and losers are analyzed to provide additional information and links to help your website recover from the impact of these changes.

Major update terminology

No one knows the exact nature of major updates unless Google tells us, as it has done in the past with a Speed or Freshness update.

To analyze the impact of Google's core update on organic search results, we can look at two things: visibility and volatility.

Visibility tells us about the organic presence of a domain in Google search results.

When the visibility score increases, the site ranks for more frequently used keywords that can attract clicks.

Conversely, a decrease in visibility score means that the domain is losing keywords.

How much visibility increases or decreases is called "volatility."

We can tell when major updates impact a website because the viewability score increases or decreases sharply over a specific period that corresponds to Google's ad.

With these two terms in mind, let's look at the Semrush Sensor data and the Sistrix Visibility Index to see what we can learn about the May Core Update 2022.

Affected industries

Marketers discussed the huge swings and drops in site traffic at the start of the rollout.

Semrush sensor data showed that the May 2022 update was mild compared to the last kernel update in November 2021.

Скриншот из Semrush, июнь 2022 г.

Mordy Oberstein ,  Head of SEO Branding at Wix, analyzed Semrush Sensor data on June 1 and found no indication that the May 2022 update was targeting specific industries.

I asked Oberstein what fluctuations indicate the update is targeting a specific niche, and he said he doesn't think Google is targeting specific verticals; that this is not a hard number, but rather a consistent trend for content types in this vertical.

Oberstein recommends that people look at what's happening at the page level, "...because you can't diagnose what's happening until you look at a specific (keyword) ranking change."

Searches affected

During the Wix webinar Markus Tober ,  founder of Searchmetrics, broke down ranking volatility by keyword assignment using Semrush sensor data.

Keyword intent can be divided into four main categories:

  • Informational: Find the answer to a question or general information.
  • Navigation: Find a specific site or page.
  • Commercial: Research brands or services.
  • Transactional: take an action or purchase.

The graph shows informational (responses) and transactional (purchase) search queries subject to volatility greater than 50% during the May 2022 core update.

Tober's findings align with who we saw as the winners and losers in the SISTRIX Visibility Index, which we'll dive into next.

Winners and Losers

We can see the next winners and losers based on the Sistrix Visibility Index (keyword rankings weighted by search volume and click-through rate).

Winners

The winners were determined as those ranking in the top 20 websites for absolute change in visibility in the UK.

Screenshot from Sistrix, June 2022

E-commerce for big brands

E-commerce has been a popular topic of conversation on social media, and the Sistrix UX Visibility Index supports the chatter.

Branded retail websites such as Amazon, eBay and Etsy are shown in the table above as having the largest absolute change in visibility.

They take up more of the hypothetical “showcase” online.

This expansion of brand presence and three product review updates over the past year may explain the decline of affiliate site owners.

Screenshot from Google search results, June 2022.

Large brand e-commerce websites (Amazon, eBay, and Etsy) are ahead of smaller sites in implementing a complete product blueprint.

This finding is consistent with the 51% volatility in transactional searches (buy) shared by Markus Tober.

Video

Video sites such as YouTube, TikTok, Disney Plus, Hulu and Twitch have seen significant growth.

TikTok had the most impressive growth - the red line is shown below - with an overall gain of 133%.

Скриншот от Sistrix, июнь 2022 г.

This phenomenon plays a role in what we know about how the Internet develops.

People love watching videos online, and Google already indexes videos from millions of different sites.

They can find videos on the home page of search results, video search results, Google Images, and Discover.

In a March episode of the "Off The Record" podcast, Google product manager Danielle Marshak said, "We think this kind of content can be useful for many different types of search queries, and we've been experimenting with ways to show it to users more often."

Losers

Losers were defined as groups that experienced a significant decline in the Sistrix Visibility Index.

Скриншот от Sistrix, июнь 2022 г.

News and media publishers

Among 30 news websites analyzed Steve Payne ,  marketing manager at Sistrix, found overall losses for most news and media publishers.

The loss primarily affected generalists who write about everything; such as celebrity news, sports scores, weather, economics and career advice.

In the example below, you can see that independent.co.uk is gaining significant momentum for its /topic directory, while competitor dailymail.co.uk (non-topic landing pages) is failing.

Screenshot from Sistrix, June 2022

Although "Google knows that while you may have the latest news about the Knicks," explained Malte Landwehr , former VP of Product at Searchmetrics, “that doesn’t mean you’re what people are searching for [for queries like] “eyeshadow”….”

Help websites

Reference websites, including dictionaries, fake Wikipedia, song lyrics and stock photo sites, were among the losers.

Landwehr explains that you can think of these pages (man pages) as "backfill" for Google.

While a definition type page may appear relevant based on TF-IDF, Word2Vec, or similar approaches, they rarely match the search intent.

This conclusion is supported by the fact that Markus Tober found information keywords with a volatility of 54%.

New search results features

You may have noticed various rich results in SERPs for transactional queries in a visual grid format.

These appear as thumbnail images of the product, and when you click on the product, it opens a knowledge panel with shopping options.

The grid format was initially seen on mobile devices around the end of March 2022, and is now making its way to desktop computers. You can check this yourself with searches like “sleeping bag” or “brush”.

Screenshot from Google search results, June 2022.

While these new shopping features could be seen in the days leading up to the official announcement of the May 2022 update, they are important to mention as they will undoubtedly impact eCom traffic and it is easy to misinterpret the impact of the major update.

The rise of visual search results: what does this mean for marketers?

Major updates are changes that are made to improve Google search results overall and help Google keep up with the changing nature of people's searches.

If you see a drop in your rankings, it's a compelling signal that you need to update your content to match the current search query and keep up with updates in your industry.

Here's a summary of what we're seeing change.

Video Search Results: The New Frontier of SEO

The demand for video content is growing. A recent study showed that 73%   people prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service.

And Google knows this.

The videos are already appearing in several places on Google. And remember Marshak's earlier remarks: Google is experimenting with ways to show users more video content.

Visualize product information with rich snippets

In a study of the May core update, transactional (purchase) search queries showed a volatility of 51%.

E-commerce website owners can improve search results by adding HTML markup.

This helps potential buyers by providing additional information such as prices or ratings.

For example, more people may click on a search result with a high review rating because it provides positive social proof.

You can visualize your product information by adding structured data to your product pages.

Google Shopping Visual Grid Format

It's no secret that purchasing behavior has changed dramatically over the past two years; e-commerce sales, for example, grew 43% in 2020.

Hundreds of millions of people search for transactional queries every day, and Google is testing new ways to bring products to the people who search for them.

Discovered a few days before Google's official announcement of the May 2022 update, we can see the products in a visual grid that opens in the Knowledge Panel mentioned above.

Final thoughts

We hope you find the information about the May 2022 update helpful. If your website has been negatively impacted, we strongly recommend reading Google's guidelines on how to rate your content  after updating the kernel.

Remember, what we wrote above is a hypothesis; an educated guess based on publicly available data.

Has your site's visibility improved or decreased since the May 2022 update? Let us know in the comments.