Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Thing · Update
Broad changes to Google's ranking systems, announced several times a year, that reassess content quality across the web.
Glossary · Core update
A significant, broad change to Google's ranking systems, made several times a year and announced on the Google Search Status Dashboard. Core updates do not target specific sites and are not penalties.
Documented in
As of 3 October 2026, the Ranking history of Google's Search Status Dashboard lists two core updates in 2026 (March and May) and four spam updates (March, June, August and September).
Google Search Status Dashboard (Ranking incident history) · Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google's 2019 post on core updates says Google tests any broad core update before it goes live, including feedback from its search quality raters, whose data is not used directly in ranking.
Search Central blog (1 August 2019) · Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google's core updates page recommends waiting at least a full week after a core update has finished rolling out before analysing Search Console data, then comparing that week with a week before the update started.
Google Search Central · Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google's core updates page says a small drop in position after a core update (for example from 2 to 4) needs no drastic action, while a large drop (for example from 4 to 29) calls for a deeper assessment.
Google Search Central · Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google's core updates page says improvements can take effect in a few days but may take several months for its systems to confirm that the site as a whole produces helpful content, sometimes only at the next core update.
Google Search Central · Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google's core updates page says Google also makes smaller core updates that are not announced, and these can also lift a site that has improved.
Google Search Central · Day 3 · What are quality updates
Slide and stage claims that name it, the ones Google’s documentation does not cover first.
Google sometimes couples a core update with an update to its Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
To improve a site after a core update, check whether users can complete their information journey on the site and ask users directly, for example with customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, then improve based on the answers.
Google estimated that a core update affects a site within 2 to 4 weeks from the beginning of its rollout.
Search has changed every year since its start, for example the Florida update in 2003 (before core updates existed), Universal Search and the Knowledge Graph.
Gary Illyes · Day 3 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.
Google's slide said the more people post on the internet, the more saturated topics become and the harder it gets to find the highest quality content, so Google might launch core updates to improve the quality and relevance of search results.
Every kind of Search update, whether a feature launch, a core update or a spam update, has the same goal: satisfying users' information needs with better results.
Google stressed that core updates are not punitive: they are not meant to punish any site but to improve how results are surfaced.
Pages that perform worse after a core update usually do not violate Google's spam policies; Google has changed, perhaps slightly, how it thinks about quality.
The purpose of core updates is to improve the quality and relevance of search results for users.
A ranking drop after a core update is not a penalty, so technically there is no recovery from a core update in the way there is after a spam update.
After a core update a site can win back some of its rankings by improving the site as a whole.
A drop after a core update can simply mean that a competitor now does better because Google rethought how it assesses quality as a whole.
Google's 'Recoveries' slide advised sites affected by a core update to keep doing a great job, look at what competitors are doing better and learn from sites that are doing better.
Recovery after a core update typically takes 3 to 6 months once the site has put in work to regain traffic, and up to 6 months to a year, until the next core update.
Several times a year Google makes significant, broad changes to its search algorithms and systems, which it calls core updates.
Google announces core updates when they happen by posting them on the Google Search Status Dashboard.
Core updates do not target specific sites; they change how Google assesses certain properties of content.
A core update may reward pages that were previously under-rewarded, so when some pages go down after a core update, other pages must go up.
Answering the common question whether to fix individual pages or the whole site after a core update, Google advised taking a close look at the site as a whole and trying to be objective.
Because owners struggle to judge their own site objectively, the speaker suggested asking someone else to review the site after a core update drop.
After a core update drop, plan a site-wide quality review instead of page-by-page fixes or a technical 'recovery': have someone outside the team assess the site, compare it with the pages that gained, and test whether users can finish their task, for example with short satisfaction surveys.
Ibrahim Anjro · Day 3 · What are quality updates
Set expectations for recovery work: a manual action can lift within weeks of a real clean-up, but recovery from a core update typically takes 3 to 6 months and may need the next core update, so do not judge quality work within the first weeks.
Ibrahim Anjro · Day 3 · How long does it take to..?
Kit items about Core updates: their own words name it, or several of the claims they rest on do.
Also inglossary term Core update
Things named in the same claim, with the number of claims they share.