We all know that Google has said numerous times that you cannot fix core ranking algorithm updates. But John Mueller from Google this morning said in a webmaster hangout that there is a reason for this – he said it is not just one thing to fix but many fundamental issues you need to fix or improve on your site so Google can trust the site.

So with the June 2019 core update that finished rolling out last Saturday, people want to know what they can do to fix their site. Google says there is no fix but what really can one do?

John was asked about this and at the 26:12 mark into the video he explained why Google can’t give specific advice here. But when he explained it, he mentioned specific examples of things that Google might look at and say that this specific site is not so trustworthy. John mentioned three main things as examples but again, I assume there are more:

(1) Does the site look outdated
(2) Do people not recognize who your authors are
(3) Are the author photos not their real photos but stock images

He also mentioned the Panda post from Amit Singhal where it asks you 23 questions about your site.

John said Google might go ahead and put together a similar post to that to kinda of give us directions on what to look for around these core updates.

John lumped together core updates with relevancy updates and quality updates, he referenced the Panda post as tips – they seem to be very related. He said “relevance updates, a lot of the kind of quality updates, the core updates that we make” when talking about the topic.

Here is the transcript, read it:

All of these things are combined and maybe give Google some sort of trust factor – although, Google said numerous times they don’t really give trust scores. But that might be a matter of terminology.

Here is the video embed, listen for yourself.

Forum discussion at YouTube.