There is much speculation about how long it takes Google to re-rank a site after quality issues have been resolved.
Some believe that it could be approximately 15 days, while others think you have to wait until the next quality update.
What is the real length of time you should expect it to take for quality improvements to be accounted for in Google’s algorithm?
In a Google Hangout with John Mueller, a webmaster was talking about this very issue. They were concerned about how they were still fluctuating in the search results, despite having made significant improvements to their website.
Mueller explained:
“So if you’re seeing fluctuations like that, then usually that’s a sign that our algorithms are not sure how to show your website appropriately in search. And usually, the good part there is that it doesn’t take a lot more to make our algorithms a little bit happier, and then you see fewer fluctuations.
But it’s hard to figure out what that little bit more is. So my recommendation there is always to try to find a way to significantly improve the quality of the website overall, so that the algorithms are for sure, always on the good side.
And that, I think it’s hard to turn that into something practical. And that’s something where you almost have to know your website, and you know your users and figure out ways to really try to improve it with a big step.”
The webmaster then asked John if he could tell them how long it would take to re-crawl.
He explained:
“How long does that take? It’s Yes, it’s really hard to say. It’s like on the one hand, we we have to recrawl the content, like if you make significant changes on your website, we have to recrawl that and to recrawl that across a larger site, that can take a bit of time, especially if you make bigger changes, like across everything.
If you change the structure of your website, I would assume something like that, just purely from a technical point of view would take, I don’t know maybe a month and for understanding the the quality changes overall, I would see that as something where it probably takes a few months on our site to actually understand that this website has significantly changed.
It’s not something that you can fix in a week. It’s probably more like three or four months, something like that, if you make significant quality changes.”
What Does Repairing Quality Issues Mean For You?
It’s really quite simple: if you’ve made changes to your site, don’t expect to see results overnight. Even though it can be maddening to wait(especially when your client wants fast results), you don’t have to be concerned if you don’t see rapid improvement in ranking.
Based on John Mueller’s information, if you’re making substantial quality changes to your site — more than just a few pages, for example — expect it to take 60-90 days for Google to recrawl the site.
This is why it is important to set client expectations early, and ensure that your client doesn’t have their sights set on an unrealistic date.
