I always wonder why Google will confirm some core ranking algorithm updates and not others. So I asked John Mueller of Google if he knows the behind the scenes decision making process on when Google confirms a core algorithm update. He said it is mostly around if the non-SEO community is confused, Google may decide to comment.

I asked John Mueller about this at the 9:55 mark into yesterday’s Google hangout. John explained that they do preannounce some algorithm changes, like the speed update, mobile-friendly, mobile-first indexing, etc – because those are specific things that webmasters can take action on. But my question was specific to core relevancy and ranking changes and he said it was more likely around if the non-SEO world is confused by a ranking update – they may decide to confirm something changed and explain that there is nothing a webmaster can do to change things.

The conversation was a bit funny, so here is the embed to watch it all, it should start at the right place, so just click play:

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Follow up question:

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In continuation of this story, I then drill into Google saying they do hundreds of updates per year.

Forum discussion at Google+.