Google’s Gary Illyes said on Twitter that core updates do not penalize websites. For example, cleaning your links won’t help if your rankings drop after a core update. Instead, it’s likely that other websites do something better than your website.
I think the message got lost: if you're "hit" by a core update, you shouldn't think of it as a penalty. You might not be doing anything wrong at all, it might just be that someone is doing something better.
— Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) October 9, 2019
(imma mute this thread fyi)
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