It has been five and a half months since the last Google broad core update. To give you context, generally this updates happen every few months or so. But it is now almost 3 months longer than the average span between Google core updates. SEOs are waiting for it and some want it sooner than others.
The last core update was 5 months and 16 days ago, the May 2020 core update. The one prior to that was on January 13, 2020, the January 2020 core update and the one before that was on September 24, 2020, the September 2019 core update. Oh, before that was on June 3, 2019, the June 2019 core update and I can go on and on.
In August we reported that SEOs were bracing themselves for an update, it felt like one was around the corner. Then nothing was announced and then the indexing bugs over the past couple of months seemed to have consumed us.
But where is the next core update? John Mueller of Google won't say, he posted on Twitter "we tend not to pre-announce these kinds of things, sorry." Well, Google does pre-announce core updates but normally with 24-hour notice, not weeks or months notice.
We tend not to pre-announce these kinds of things, sorry.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) October 20, 2020
In general, I wouldn't wait for search updates if you're planning on improving your site.
Does that mean you should not do anything if your site was impacted by a previous core update? In some cases, you can recover from a broad core update prior to another broad core update release.
In any event, the SEO community is wondering what is the hold up.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
