How to Recover from a Google Core Update

In this post I explain the steps you can take to recover from a dip in traffic to your website caused by a Google Core update.

Google core updates can have massive implications for businesses that rely heavily on organic traffic; Google, after all, handles nearly 92% of the web’s search queries (source: Statcounter).

Some organizations experience huge drops in their website traffic as a result of a core update, and this obviously has very negative implications for the profitability — or even viability — of many businesses. In many cases, a Google core update can be worse for a business than a recession.

But there is good news: there are steps you can take to gradually improve the situation and give your site the best chance possible of regaining lost rankings.

And, in this post, I’m going to give you a checklist of these steps.

But before working your way through this recovery checklist, it’s important to be very clear about what a Google core update actually is.

So, let’s start with that.

What is a Google core update?

Google’s search algorithms are updated all the time — pretty much every day, in fact, according to Google.

However, sometimes, Google makes big changes to them, and these are called ‘core updates’ (the company used to refer to them as ‘broad core updates’ but has changed the terminology slightly recently).

The most recent of these – the appropriately-named ‘March 2024 core update‘ – was released on 5 March 2024, and is at time of writing rolling out.

Now, as core updates go, the March core update is expected to be more significant than most. This is largely because with this one, Google has made changes to multiple core systems, largely with a view to tackling the use of AI to produce spammy content at scale.

This update also sees Google integrate its ‘Helpful Content System‘ into its core algorithm, promising that the March 2024 core update will “reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.”

But regardless of the nature or scale of individual core updates, the starting point to recovering from any of them is to take a close look at how Google explains them.

The company’s official definition of what core updates are is as follows:

Although on first inspection this statement sounds a bit vague, if you look at it closely you’ll see that it contains two pretty big hints about why a site may have been demoted in Google’s index: it was perceived by Google to have problems with its relevance and authority.

The question is: can you actually fix these problems?

And if so, how?

Let’s find out what Google has to say about this.

Google’s official take on recovering from a core update

Over the years, Google has given rather mixed messages about how possible it is to recover from a core algorithm update — at least until the next one is rolled out — and how desirable it is to even try!

For a long time, the company’s support materials about core updates stated fairly explicitly that “pages that drop after a core update don’t have anything wrong to fix.”

This advice became a bit more ambiguous in May 2022:

And in March 2024, the advice became more specific again:

The implication of these last two statements is that there ARE fixes that can be made.

And John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google — a key public face of the company when it comes to advising site owners on SEO — has indicated a few times that it is, in fact, possible to make changes to your site that can bring lost traffic back after a core update, and before the next one is rolled out, too.

In his Google Search Central video hangouts, Mueller has said that in the aftermath of a core update, there are various ‘incremental improvements’ you can make to recover from a drop in rankings.

The hangout below contains a particularly clear statement from him on this — in the opening few minutes, where Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz discusses the issue of recovery with him.

But what are these ‘incremental improvements’ that can potentially get you out of a traffic dip?

Well, there is no definitive answer to this — because Google keeps the vast majority of the inner workings of its algorithms secret.

However, based on…

we’ve identified steps that – over time – can help. I’m going to walk you through these now.

The first thing to do is…stay calm.

1. Don’t panic

When faced with a large dip or even an outright collapse in your site traffic, freaking out is a totally understandable reaction.

However, it can also be counterproductive if it leads to you rushing through a bunch of changes to your site and its content without fully thinking them through.

A key thing to remember about Google updates is that they usually take a few weeks to roll out.

During Google updates, search results are often filled with a lot of wild, but temporary, changes in rankings. This is something that SEO experts sometimes refer to as the ‘Google Dance.’

And, if you’re lucky, you may find that your traffic has actually reverted back to its original level within a couple of weeks (or, in some cases, even increased).

So, making huge, radical changes to your site in the middle of a core update can be a huge gamble — and one that could negatively affect aspects of your content that Google actually approves of.

So, stay calm, and wait until you know that a core update rollout is complete and that you have definitely been adversely affected before taking action on your site.

2. Use data to identify content that needs improvement

Once the rollout of a core update is complete, it’s time to identify the content that has been particularly badly affected by it.

If you use an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush, you may already have rank tracking in place; this can help you spot rankings that have taken a particularly bad hit.

Google’s Search Console and Google Analytics can also help you identify pages that have suffered significant traffic drops. You should be able to spot these by looking at the number of visits to them before the announcement of a core update and in the days after it.

Using the data from these tools, compile a spreadsheet of ‘problem pages’ that have seen a particularly sharp drop in traffic.

Then…

3. Improve the relevance of your problem pages

Remember that statement from Google outlining the main purpose of core updates?

As discussed, this basically spells out why the content in the list of ‘problem pages’ you’ve just compiled has been pushed down the search rankings: it’s now viewed as being less relevant and authoritative than that of your competitors.

Let’s tackle the relevance aspect first. How can you make your content more relevant than everybody else’s?

Ensure your pages and posts are up to date

Google has been quite clear about the fact that it uses content ‘freshness’ as a way to determine relevancy.

In fact, as long ago as 2010 it publicly announced that it had created an algorithm specifically to do that: ‘Caffeine.’

It’s easy to confuse ‘freshness’ with ‘I must produce new content,’ however. While publishing new posts periodically is important, it’s not going to solve your immediate problem here: the fact that your existing pages and posts are now receiving less traffic.

So, look at your existing ‘problem pages’ and correct any out-of-date or inaccurate information they contain.

(This is particularly significant if you run a reviews site — products and services can change over time and in order for your reviews to stay relevant, they will need to reflect these changes.)

It’s important to note however that making minor changes to pages and then republishing them with a more recent date is unlikely to impress Google (in fact it is likely to do the opposite).

Really, only substantial and helpful changes are likely to be rewarded.

Ensure you are covering topics in depth

Generally speaking, content that performs well in Google search results covers topics in a very in-depth way — ‘long form’ blog posts, which drill down into a topic in depth, tend to do better than ‘thin,’ lightweight content.

So take a look at the pages and posts that are now outranking yours, and ask yourself:

While you have to be careful not to overdo the ‘long form’ side of things, a good way to improve the performance of the pages that have lost traffic is to ensure that they are covering the topic they’re addressing in considerable detail.

However, readers often want digestible information as much as a deep dive, so think about ways that you can cater for both types of reader — i.e., ones who want a quick answer, and ones that want to learn about a topic in depth.

(Sometimes summaries or ‘quick answer’ boxes at the top of a page can help square this circle a bit.)

Ensure your content is written with humans, not search engines, in mind

Many content creators end up obsessing about ‘ranking signals’ — some real, some imagined – and end up producing stuff that they think a computer program will like.

But it’s vital to remember that at the end of the day, both you — and search engines, in their choice of what to surface in results — are aiming to present content that is highly relevant to humans.

Google has been stressing the need to focus your content creation efforts on ‘real’ people rather than search engines for some time now, but with the rise of generative AI, and the ability it gives website owners to create thin content at scale, is placing an ever greater emphasis on ranking content that is genuinely helpful.

Accordingly, ensure that you place helpfulness and a positive user experience at the heart of any content you’re trying to improve.

So, make sure that your content is always:

Sense-check your poorly-performing pages against Google’s relevance questions

Google has a list of questions that it encourages you to ask yourself when trying to improve content that has been affected by a core update.

The ones that focus on improving content quality and relevance are as follows:

Answer all these questions (honestly!) and craft your content based on your answers.

4. Improve your pages from an authority point of view

When it comes to improving the authority of a page or post, there are generally two things to look at: ‘on-page’ authority and ‘off-page’ authority.

Improve ‘on-page’ authority

By on-page authority I’m referring to how trustworthy the content is in its own right.

Google is (unusually) open about what constitutes trustworthy content: its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines document outlines — in considerable depth — the characteristics that are associated with a piece of authoritative content.

This document contains a series of ‘Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness‘ (or ‘E-E-A-T’) benchmarks that can be used to determine whether a page should be considered an authoritative source of information on a particular subject.

It’s worth reading the document in full to get a complete picture of these benchmarks, but some key takeaways for improving the authority of a page or post are as follows:

In addition to the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines document referred to above, Google has published a set of questions to help you determine if there are any authority / quality issues with a piece of content. These are definitely worth reading — and again, answering honestly.

Improve off-page authority

Once you’ve done everything you can to improve the on-page authority of a piece of content that has suffered as a result of a core update, it’s time to look at what you can do for it ‘off page.’

This is because Google doesn’t trust pages based solely on the content of the page itself — it looks at how much other pages trust it too.

Gaining trust through links

The most obvious example of ‘off page’ trust is generated by links — it’s no secret that if a lot of high-quality pages link to your content, it stands a much better chance of performing well in search engine results pages.

However, it’s worth pointing out here that Google’s John Mueller is on record as saying that core updates are more about the quality and authority of content, rather than how good your backlink profile is:

So I wouldn’t necessarily assume that getting rid of a bunch of poor-quality links will solve core update problems.

But that said, if you have a large number of questionable links pointing to your site — ones that you know you have paid for, or ones that are the result of shady link schemes — then there is an argument for removing them.

While this is unlikely to completely reverse a rankings drop related to a core update, it nonetheless may help you gain some traffic and mitigate its effect.

Similarly, some outreach to high-quality websites that generates some valuable links may have a similarly positive ‘offsetting’ effect.

So, if you’ve noticed a dip in traffic to a particular page, look at its backlink profile in some depth, to ensure that:

If you find that the link profile of a particular piece of content is rather thin, it might be time to consider some (strictly ‘white-hat’) link building outreach and online PR to boost it.

If you find a lot of unnatural links pointing to one of your ‘problem pages’, try to get them removed, or consider disavowing them using Google’s disavow tool.

Proceed with caution with the second tactic however, as if carried out incorrectly, this can really hurt your SEO — and some Google staffers are on record as saying that in most cases, disavowing isn’t really necessary.

(According to various statements by Google’s John Mueller, disavowals should be reserved for links that you know you bought.)

Building authority via brand mentions

Another way that you can can help Google view your content as being authoritative is by seeking out mentions of your brand on other sites.

Google has been quite clear that this can really help with rankings, with Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes saying:

You can increase brand mentions by:

(You could also consider guest blogging — but I’d focus on doing so on high-quality blogs only. Google is not always a fan of guest blogging, especially when the aim is mainly to get a backlink out of it).

As with any SEO tactic, it’s important not to overdo things with brand mentions — be selective about where you seek out them out. Always focus on quality over quantity, and avoid any spammy tactics.

5. Conduct competitor analysis

If one of your pages goes down in search rankings and a competitor’s goes up, this isn’t because of magic — it’s because your competitor is doing something better than you (at least in Google’s eyes!).

The good news is that there are now lots of SEO tools available to help you find out what that ‘better thing’ is.

For example, using apps like Semrush, you can find out:

All this information can help you recraft your content from a relevance point of view, and build authority via reaching out to the right people for links and brand mentions.

However, it’s important not to rely solely on software to work out what’s going wrong with your content — as mentioned earlier, Google wants to reward content that humans like.

So, always make a close personal inspection of the pages and posts that are now outranking yours, to see if they are easier to read and use; nicer to look at; or more shareable.

Then, use this research and any insights gained to improve your own content.

6. Revisit your technical SEO basics

As I’ve discussed a number of times throughout this post — and as Google has repeatedly said — core updates chiefly deal with aspects of content that give it relevance and authority.

Now, this might lead you to think that recovering from a Google core update isn’t really going to involve sorting out technical SEO issues like mobile usability, page speed, core web vitals and so on.

And, in general, you’re probably right.

However, the thing to remember about technical SEO is that a good technical setup helps generate a positive user experience — which can in turn make a page come across as more relevant or authoritative.

Let’s say that a user reads two articles about web design:

Which one do you think the user — and Google — will trust more?

Which one is more likely to get shared or linked to?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that it’s the second one.

So, as part of any core update recovery process, it makes sense to address key technical SEO issues that are negatively affecting your user experience.

Consider making improvements to:

Even if these improvements don’t make a very direct impact on relevance and authority, they still have the potential to help you improve traffic levels in general — something that can, at the very least, offset a dip in organic traffic caused by a core update.

7. Offset your traffic loss by publishing new content

So far, we’ve discussed what you can do to your existing content to help you recover from a Google algorithm change.

However, there is also the option to publish new content on your website as a way to get more search traffic.

By publishing more pages and posts on your site, you are going to be giving Google more opportunities to index content and present it to users; you are also giving users more content that they can link to or share. All of this can help generate new organic traffic that can make up for the hits you’ve lost.

You could consider using new content as a way of establishing ‘topical authority‘ for your site — as the name of this tactic suggests, this involves covering all aspects of a particular topic in considerable depth, thus sending a signal to Google that you are an expert on that topic.

(Keyword research is important here: you’ll need to put some effort into finding out what people are actually searching for in your niche and identifying the sort of phrases you can realistically rank for — and create content based on this data. Tools like Moz or Ahrefs can help with this process.)

The key thing here however is to put quality at the heart of your new pages and posts; to ensure that any new content contains the relevance and authority signals that I’ve discussed throughout this article.

And I’d definitely view this step as a ‘phase B’ tactic — it’s best to sort out any problems with existing content before publishing a lot of new stuff!

Wrapping up / cheatsheet

I hope you’ve found this guide to recovering from a Google core update helpful! Below you’ll find a cheatsheet containing the key steps I’ve discussed throughout this article.

Good luck with improving your rankings, and if you have any questions, do leave them in the comments section below — we read them all and will do our best to answer any queries you may have.

Finally, please do share this content if you think it would be helpful to others.