Chapter 6 — Exercises

Work these in order; they climb from recall to judgment. Items marked † have full worked solutions in the answers appendix — try them yourself first. No answer key lives in this file (that is deliberate — retrieval without a safety net is where the learning happens). Where an item says "your own site," use the free tool named; where it says Rivertown, use the frozen facts from the chapter's Strategy File.

A. Recall and comprehension

  1. List the four shapes a Google change can take (from §6.1's diagram), and give a one-line description of each.

  2. † Name the ten named updates in the chapter's field-guide table, and for each, state in a single phrase what it targeted or did.

  3. Define, in your own words: core update, algorithmic demotion, people-first content, and volatility.

  4. Which named updates belong to the "understanding" family, and what do they have in common that makes them impossible to "optimize against"?

  5. What is the difference between Panda and Penguin — what did each target?

  6. † In one sentence each, distinguish an algorithmic demotion from a manual action, and name the Search Console report that tells them apart.

  7. Roughly how often do broad core updates occur, and where can you find Google's confirmed log of them?

  8. What did Google state was the approximate share of queries affected by BERT at launch, and why is it important that this figure came from Google rather than a third-party tool?

B. Applied reasoning and diagnosis

  1. A site owner says: "A core update penalized me — I need to find the violation and file for reconsideration." Identify the two factual errors in that sentence and correct each.

  2. † Diagnose the drop. A publisher's organic traffic falls sharply over eight days. Walk the §6.5 decision tree out loud: list, in order, the four checks you would run, and what a "yes" versus "no" at each step would tell you.

  3. A drop is confined to exactly one URL pattern (/tag/… pages) and nothing else on the site moved. Is a broad core update the most likely cause? Explain what you would suspect instead and why.

  4. Two sites were both "hit" the same week. Site A's traffic fell across all channels (organic, direct, email, social); Site B's fell in organic only. Which one is more likely an update, and what is the other one probably suffering from?

  5. † Explain why recovery from a core-update demotion is typically measured in months and updates rather than days, using the mechanism from §6.3 and §6.6.

  6. A colleague wants to disavow a batch of links to recover from a broad core update. Explain why this is the wrong tool for this problem, and what event the disavow tool is for.

  7. The "understanding" updates (Hummingbird, RankBrain, BERT) are described as changing the game "quietly," without anyone being "hit." Explain how a site could lose rankings from such an update without having done anything wrong.

C. Read the report

  1. † Interpret this report. Search Console Performance, last 6 months: clicks flat, then a clean step-down beginning the exact week Google's status dashboard lists a broad core update, stabilizing as the update ends; impressions fell too; the loss is spread across ~200 informational pages; no manual-action notice; GA4 shows email and direct traffic unchanged. Write the five-field read (What it shows / What it doesn't / The move / The lesson / plus your one-sentence verdict).

  2. A third-party SERP-volatility tracker spikes to "very high" for three days, but your own Search Console shows your traffic is flat. What does the tracker tell you, what does it not tell you, and what do you do?

  3. You see a headline: "New Google update wipes out 42% of publisher traffic." Which evidence tier is that "42%," and what would you trust instead to understand the update's effect on your site?

D. Optimize / improve

  1. † Rewrite for people-first. Here is a thin, search-first paragraph from a home-services blog: "When your furnace is not working, it can be a problem. There are many reasons a furnace might not work. If your furnace is not working, you should call a professional furnace repair company for furnace repair services." Rewrite it as genuinely people-first content, and then list three structural changes (beyond this paragraph) that would make the whole page more likely to survive a quality update.

  2. Take a real informational page you have written or read online. Run it through the people-first vs. search-first table from §6.4 and score it honestly, row by row. Write one concrete improvement for each row where it fell on the "search-first" side.

  3. Draft a five-step, 90-day recovery program (not a checklist of tricks) for a hypothetical publisher hit by a core update, using the sequence in §6.6. For each step, name the chapter of this book that teaches it.

E. Audit your own site (free tools)

  1. † Audit for exposure. Using Google Search Console (or, if you have none, a site: search on your domain), identify your site's five thinnest or least-distinctive pages. For each, decide: does it demonstrate real experience/expertise, or is it search-first filler? Mark each keep / improve / remove — but do not delete anything yet (that is Chapter 12's disciplined process).

  2. Open the Google Search Status Dashboard and the Google Search ranking updates history page. Cross-reference the last three confirmed updates against your own traffic timeline in Search Console. Did any of them coincide with a move in your traffic? Write one sentence per update.

  3. Check your Search Console Manual actions report right now. Record whether you have any manual action (most sites don't). Explain why doing this check first — before any other diagnosis — saves time.

F. Myths, ethics, and judgment

  1. Spot the myth. For each statement, say whether it is true or a myth, and correct the myths: (a) "You need to react to every algorithm update." (b) "A core-update drop means Google found a violation." (c) "There's a service that recovers you fast from a core update." (d) "The Helpful Content system targets AI-written content specifically."

  2. † An agency offers a "guaranteed core-update recovery in 30 days" package for a flat fee. Using this chapter, write a short, evidence-based explanation of why this offer is a red flag — and what an honest engagement would promise instead.

  3. A client, panicking after a core-update drop, wants to swap the dates on 200 old posts and re-spin the text with an AI tool to "look fresh." Explain the risk in this plan and why it may make the underlying problem worse, referencing the people-first vs. search-first distinction.

  4. Is it ethical — and is it effective — to try to identify and hide the "tells" of search-first content (from §6.4's table) while continuing to produce it? Argue your answer from the chapter's evidence.

G. Strategy File (Rivertown)

  1. † Extend the Strategy File. Rivertown's ~8,000 monthly organic visits are almost all branded. Explain why this makes Rivertown incidentally resilient to core updates today, and why the growth plan of this book will create update exposure Rivertown does not currently have. What does that imply about how the new service×city pages must be built?

  2. Rivertown already has repeat customers, real reviews, referrals across five communities, and a booking form that captures emails. Draft the first three moves Rivertown could make to begin diversifying beyond Google organic — without getting ahead of the full plan (that is Chapter 36). For each, say what risk it insures against.

  3. Rivertown inherited spammy links from its old "SEO guy." Given the chapter's point that Google increasingly devalues rather than penalizes such links, write the one-sentence entry you would add to the Strategy File about these links right now (note that the disavow-or-ignore decision is deferred to Chapter 26).