The holiday shopping season. The weeks encompassing Black Friday and Cyber Monday already add pressure to businesses looking to meet customer demand as well as their own revenue projections. Throwing a core update into the mix could make this even more complicated. This has made some SEOs wonder if Google is out of touch with both the business and search communities.

The SEO community response. Many in the search community are questioning Google’s timing on this update. Some marketers responded to Google Search Liason Danny Sullivan’s explanation, including SEO Rich Missey, who identified possible issues that could arise with business stakeholders.

Sarah Blocksidge of Sixth City Marketing pointed out that, while a core update took place around the same time last year, its timing was a little more reasonable.

But other professionals, such as Barry Adams of Polemic Digital, took a more cynical view of the update (and Google’s core updates as a whole).

John Mueller of Google decided to jump into these conversations as well, asking SEOs how and when they preferred the company announce these changes.

Why we care. Businesses that made changes to their staff and inventory in preparation for the holiday shopping season may experience issues depending on the update’s impact. It’s important for SEOs to pinpoint when these ranking changes occurred so they can notify stakeholders and prepare to adjust their strategies. The impacts could continue through the end of November, so be ready to respond to decreases or increases in search visibility.