Google has confirmed that the August 2023 Core Update – the second core update this year – has completed rolling out. The update started on August 22, 2023, and completed 16 days later on September 7, 2023.
Why we care. Google algorithm updates are critical for all brands, businesses, and organizations to be aware of because they can impact how your site performs in search results. Any change in rankings from a core update – positive or negative – can impact your organic traffic, conversions and revenue.
Knowing when Google makes these updates gives you something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your website or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm.
What now? It’s a good time to dig into your analytics to see what improvements you may want to make to your pages and content.
The announcement. Google updated its status dashboard that the update has completed rolling out today, as of 4:03 pm ET:
Core updates are big. In general. Google core updates are significant algorithm updates. The early SEO industry chatter suggested this update was a fairly impactful update compared to previous core updates. Now that the update is complete, we will do a report on the impact of this update in the coming days.
Previous core updates. Here’s a timeline and our coverage of recent core updates:
- The March 2023 core update on March 15th and ending on March 28th.
- The September 2022 broad core update was less impactful than previous core updates and finished on Sept. 26.
- The May 2022 broad core update was a significant and fast update.
- The November 2021 core update
- The July 2021 core update.
- The June 2021 core update, which was slow to roll out but a big one.
Reviews update. The April 2023 reviews update was the last confirmed Google update. That update started on April 12 and finished on April 25.
Also this year was the February 2023 product reviews update, it started on Feb. 21 and ran for 14 days, ending on March 7. This was a significant update.
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. There are no specific actions to take to recover – a negative rankings impact may not signal anything is “wrong” with your pages, according to Google.
However, Google has offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Google said you can see a bit of a recovery between core updates but the biggest change you would see would be after another core update.
