Danny Sullivan from Google has officially confirmed that the second core update is finally rolling out on May 4. This time, there are no cute animal names, no witty tags. It’s just about the facts. So, it is named “May 2020 Core Update”.

About May 2020 Core Update

Google released the first core update in January this year. Since then, some of the drastic changes appeared in the world and, hence, online searches. It takes around 2 weeks to roll out completely. But this new update seems to be large. With increasing volatility in the world, the latest core update is going to bring unmatched volatility in SERP as well.

According to SEMrush Sensor, the core update of January just led to 8 points of volatility. Almost every category was increasing volatility rates on May 6, i.e. from 9 to 9.4 points. So, the core updates on May seem to be even more influencing and stronger for positions and SERPs. But it’s not the time to panic. You need to wait for this update to complete rolling out.

Who is winning and who is losing?

These core algorithm updates are actually intended to come out with huge changes in search results in all languages and countries. But as usual, there are some categories that are winning while some are losing in the SERP game. If you see some drops or gains when this update finally rolls out, don’t get surprised. We definitely expect to see some concerns related to down rankings of live events, travel, tourism and other industries during the pandemic. Volatility of most of these categories would definitely appear.

From this algorithm update, the highest impact in this way takes place in various industries, including the ones impacted by pandemic already. We compared the average value of volatility with SEMrush Sensor 7 days earlier and 2 days after the announcement of update. Real Estate, Travel, Pets & Animals, Health, and People and Society are the categories which are highly affected. It is true in both mobile and desktop searches.

Even some big domains have been affected badly. In the US alone, over half of major changes in ranking happened to websites that have over 1 million visitors per month.

Who are the winners here?

An obituary site, Legacy.com has gained over 13 positions up with popularity. But the News sector is the one which is unbeatable here. Everyone’s looking at the news constantly over the past few months. So, it goes without saying that a lot of media outlets are enjoying great user attention. Whatever they do has literally worked great and they are also getting huge benefits from it.

In terms of Business, a lot of PR outlets are gaining traction in rankings like PR Newswire, Businesswire, and GlobeNewswire. Each of them have achieved over 50 positions up.

Who are the losers?

It goes without saying that offline Entertainment has suffered a lot. Unfortunately, this update has come with bad news. One of the most popular examples is Eventbrite has lost -44 positions, which was once the one-stop destination for offline fun.

For a short while, even LinkedIn was vanished from SERPs and had huge dips in ranking. But core updates cannot affect it that much.

What to do now?

If you are worried about your own website’s fate in this storm, we suggest you read Google’s guideline. You cannot do anything much with this update and ranking changes. All you can do is improve the quality of your content from time to time. Google always prefers helpful and relevant content to be delivered to the users.