A lot of people thought that the recent turbulence in rankings was caused by a Penguin update or a 'ghost' update.
It turns out that it's part of something much bigger: Google changed its core algo
Check this out for some key lessons founds when analyzing the big winners and losers of this update:
Google Core Update 2016: Analysis of Winners and Losers Searchmetrics SEO Blog
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Parallel to this development many publishers have actually won in Google.com search results. Particularly those publishers with current or holistic content. Top winner according to our most recent Suite data is gq.com. On gq.com the biggest winning URL is a comprehensive article about NFL star Tom Brady, shown here in the screenshot on the left.
The article contains photos and a video and a lot of text (more than 3000 words including an interview). A test with Content Optimization in the Searchmetrics Suite shows that the article covers all important subtopics about entity Tom Brady.
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Whether a publisher or brands won or lost for a specific keyword is dependent on the individual QDF score that Google calculates according to current events and user behavior, particularly search volume. For topics that are current, obviously publishers with current content witnessed visibility gains.
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