Google changes its ranking systems thousands of times a year. Most changes are small, but several times a year Google announces larger updates that can move rankings significantly across many sites. Understanding them helps you react calmly instead of guessing, and it is part of the wider practice of SEO.
Types of update
- Core updates: broad changes to how Google assesses content and relevance, usually several per year. They do not target specific sites or tactics.
- Spam updates: improvements to spam detection, including link spam and scaled content abuse.
- Reviews updates: focused on product reviews and review-style content, now part of core systems.
- Helpful content system: launched in 2022 to reward people-first content; merged into core ranking in March 2024.
- Feature-specific changes: page experience, local results, AI Overviews and similar.
Landmark updates in history
- Panda (2011): targeted thin, low-quality content and content farms.
- Penguin (2012): targeted manipulative links and over-optimised anchor text.
- Hummingbird (2013): improved understanding of query meaning.
- Mobilegeddon (2015): boosted mobile-friendly pages.
- RankBrain (2015) and BERT (2019): machine learning for language understanding.
- Medic (2018): a core update with big effects on health and finance sites.
- Helpful Content (2022) and March 2024 core update: major hits to unhelpful, search-first content.
Our page on the November 2022 core update shows how site owners responded at the time.
How to tell if an update affected you
- Check Google’s Search Status Dashboard for confirmed update dates.
- Compare those dates with your traffic in Google Search Console and analytics.
- Rule out other causes: tracking changes, site errors, seasonality, migrations, lost links.
- Identify which pages and query types gained or lost.
How to respond to a drop
- Do not panic or make hasty changes during the rollout, which can take two weeks.
- Compare winners and losers for your main queries. What do the winning pages do better?
- Improve content quality: expertise, originality, depth and usefulness. See E-E-A-T.
- Remove or improve thin pages that drag down site-wide quality.
- Fix technical problems found in an SEO audit.
- Remove spam tactics if a spam update hit you.
Recovery after a core update often only shows after the next core update, once Google reassesses the site.
Frequently asked questions
Is a core update a penalty?
No. It is a reassessment of relevance and quality. Manual actions are penalties.
How can I stay informed?
Follow the Google Search Central blog for official announcements.
For independent coverage and analysis, Search Engine Land reports on every confirmed update.
Related terms
See black hat SEO, content decay and the SEO encyclopedia.
Mr. SEO
Mr. SEO is the webmaster at SEO TT - SEO tips and tricks, a publication about all things SEO related.