Several times a year, Google releases a core update. This refers to a significant and broad algorithm change made to the Google search engine. All of these updates have a common goal: To improve the quality and relevance of search results for users.
From May 2023 through as recently as last month, there were many reports of search volatility. Rankings for sites across multiple industries—and countries—were experiencing extreme ebbs and flows without any explanation. Many SEOs kept refreshing Google’s Search Status Dashboard, expecting to see an update announced—but for months, none came.
Then, on August 22, 2023, Google announced the start of a new core update. The update roll-out ended on September 7, 2023. It is not uncommon after a core update for some websites to see improvements in their rankings, while others may experience drops.
Company 119’s SEO team has been monitoring our clients’ organic search performance during and now following the completed update. While many of the details about this update are still unknown, we did not notice any major or sustained drops in organic search traffic across our clients.
Some SEOs are suggesting all the ebbs and flows we saw over the summer were early tests of this update. Others think they are unrelated. The general recovery recommendations—should you see a traffic drop—are to focus on improving low performing pages with high-quality site content rather than looking for a technical fix. Google stresses the following in their Search Central blog:
There’s nothing wrong with pages that may not be performing as well as they were before a core update. They haven’t violated our spam policies, nor been subjected to a manual or algorithmic action, as can happen to pages that do violate those policies.In fact, there’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites. Instead, the changes are about improving how our systems assess content overall. These changes may cause some pages that were previously under-rewarded to do better in search results.
One way to think of how a core update operates is to imagine you made a list of the top 100 movies in 2021. A few years later in 2024, you refresh the list. It’s going to naturally change. Some new and wonderful movies that never existed before will now be candidates for inclusion. You might also reassess some films and realize they deserved a higher place on the list than they had before.
The list will change, and films previously higher on the list that move down aren’t bad. There are simply more deserving films that are coming before them.
We are continuing to keep an eye on Google’s help desk to check for any additional details provided. You can read more about the update from these sources: SEO Roundtable, CMSWire, and Search Engine Journal.
If there are any tangible next steps or action items that you can take for your own website, we will share them in a future blog post. In the meantime, if you need assistance with evaluating the performance of your site in search—or understanding how this and future Google core updates may impact your Google search rankings—please reach out to our team.
About the author: Lisa Kellogg
Lisa guides content and search optimization research and strategy at Company 119. With more than a decade of experience in digital marketing, she stays on top of the latest SEO trends and updates and translates them into actionable insights for our clients.
