Google Search's core updates and your website
Several times a year, Google makes significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems. We refer to these as core updates, and we give notice when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates.
In general, most sites don't need to worry about core updates and may not even realize one has happened. However, if you have questions about a change in traffic that correlates with a core update, this page is for you. It explains more about how core updates work, and what you can do to assess and perhaps improve your content.
How core updates work
Core updates are designed to ensure that overall, we're delivering on our mission to present helpful and reliable results for searchers. These changes are broad in nature, and don't target specific sites or individual web pages. As content on the web changes, we assess and update our systems to keep pace, as a whole.
One way to think about a core update is to imagine that a friend asked you for your top food recommendations. While you do have a list of your 20 favorite restaurants, things have changed since you initially wrote it in 2019. Some new restaurants that didn't exist before are now candidates for your list. You might reassess some restaurants and realize they move to a higher spot on the list, given how many consistently positive experiences you had there, or to account for your friend's preference for dog-friendly restaurants. The list will change, and restaurants that move down aren't necessarily "bad"; there are just other restaurants that make your top 20.
Check if there's a traffic drop in Search Console
If you're seeing a drop in position and suspect it might correlate with the timing of a core update, use Search Console to determine whether you need to make a change.
- Confirm that the core update has finished rolling out. Check the Search Status Dashboard and take note of the start and end date of the core update.
- Compare the right dates: We recommend waiting at least a full week after a core update completes before analyzing your site in Search Console. After a week, try comparing this week with a week before the core update started rolling out; this way you'll be able to better pinpoint what exactly has changed.
- Review your top pages and queries. Assess how they were ranking before and after
the core update: is the drop small or large?
- Small drop in position (dropping from position 2 to 4): There's no need to take drastic action (in fact, we recommend avoiding making changes to content that's already performing well).
- Large drop in position (dropping from position 4 to 29): Do a deeper assessment.
- Analyze different search types separately: This can help you understand whether the drop you've seen happened in Web Search, Google Images, Video mode, or the News tab.
Assessing a large drop in position
If you're seeing a sustained, large drop in position for your site as a whole, read through the self-assessment to check if your site overall (not just individual pages) is delivering content that's helpful, reliable, and people first. Specifically, we recommend keeping the following in mind:
- Take a close look at your site as a whole, and try to be objective. You might also ask others you trust (that are unaffiliated with your site) to do an assessment using the questions.
- Evaluate the pages that were most impacted. Look closely at these to understand how these pages may perform against the self-assessment questions. For example, there may be other pages on the web that are doing a better job of helping the searcher.
Things to keep in mind when making changes
- Avoid doing "quick fix" changes (like removing some page element because you heard it was bad for SEO). Instead, focus on making changes that make sense for your users and are sustainable in the long term.
- Consider how you can improve your content in meaningful ways. For example, it could be that rewriting or restructuring your content makes it easier for your audience to read and navigate the page.
- Deleting content is a last resort, and only to be considered if you think the content can't be salvaged. In fact, if you're considering deleting entire sections of your site, that's likely a sign those sections were created for search engines first, and not people. If that's the case for your site, then deleting the unhelpful content can help the good content on your site perform better.
How long does it take to see an effect in Search results
If you've made improvements, it may take time to see an effect in Search results: some changes can take effect in a few days, but it could take several months for our systems to learn and confirm that the site as a whole is now producing helpful, reliable, people-first content in the long term. If it's been a few months and you still haven't seen any effect, that could mean waiting until the next core update.