Google Algorithm Updates

How to check a Google update’s impact on your site

1. Connect Search Console and pick the site to analyse.
2. Look at the timeline: Google update history is overlaid on your clicks and impressions.
3. Compare the periods before and after the update date rather than single days — rollouts take weeks.
4. Check whether the date also coincides with your own changes: a release, migration or content update.

Example: interpreting a traffic decline

If the decline starts before rollout and is confined to one page template, investigate your own release or a technical issue first. If many pages and queries lose impressions during rollout while competitors with a different format grow, the core-update hypothesis becomes stronger. This is correlation, not automatic proof of causation.

Find the pages behind the change in Wins & Losses, check ageing content with Content Decay and inspect an affected URL with the Page Analyzer.

How to tell an algorithm update from your own mistake

An update usually hits many pages and queries at once and starts within a narrow date range. A technical error more often hits one section or one page type.

Before rewriting content, check the obvious: indexing, robots.txt, canonicals, redirects and response codes. An "update" often turns out to be your own release on the same date.

Core updates are not penalties and there is no error to undo. They re-assess relevance, so the response is work on content quality and completeness, not hunting for a technical switch.

Frequently Asked Questions