What are Google algorithm updates?

Google algorithm updates are changes to the systems that rank search results. Google makes thousands of changes a year, most of them too small to notice, along with a handful of larger, named updates that can shift rankings across the web in a matter of days. Google’s guide to its ranking systems is the authoritative overview of what those systems are.

This guide does two jobs. It lists the named updates from 2025 and 2026 with Google’s own dates, so you can check your traffic against them. And it walks through how to tell whether an update hit your site, what each kind of hit looks like in your data, and what recovery realistically involves.

The three kinds of update that move traffic

Most named updates fall into three categories, and they behave differently in your Search Console data.

Core updates are broad re-evaluations of how well pages serve the people searching. They roll out over one to three weeks, affect many sites at once, and there is nothing specific to fix afterwards; pages that were over-rewarded lose ground to pages judged more helpful. Our core updates guide covers what they reassess.

Spam updates improve Google’s automated spam detection, the systems that enforce its spam policies. They roll out faster, often in a few days, and they can remove specific pages from the results for their main terms while leaving the rest of the site alone.

Smaller named updates target a specific surface or system, such as reviews content or Discover. They matter if you depend on that surface and are usually irrelevant otherwise. The helpful content system, once a separate named update, is now part of the core systems; see our helpful content guide for what it rewards.

The 2026 and 2025 update timeline

Every date and duration below is from Google’s ranking updates list, checked on 12 September 2026. Google announces the start of a rollout and records how long it took to complete; that completion window is what you compare your traffic against.

2026:

  • August 2026 spam update. Started 18 August, completed in 2 days and 16 hours.
  • June 2026 spam update. Started 24 June, completed in 2 days and 1 hour.
  • May 2026 core update. Started 21 May, completed in 11 days and 21 hours.
  • March 2026 core update. Started 27 March, completed in 12 days and 4 hours.
  • March 2026 spam update. Started 24 March, completed in 19 hours and 30 minutes.
  • February 2026 Discover update. Started 5 February, completed in 21 days and 17 hours.

2025:

  • December 2025 core update. Started 11 December, completed in 18 days and 2 hours.
  • August 2025 spam update. Started 26 August, completed in 26 days and 15 hours.
  • June 2025 core update. Started 30 June, completed in 16 days and 18 hours.
  • March 2025 core update. Started 13 March, completed in 13 days and 21 hours.

At the time of writing, no September 2026 core update had been announced. Core updates have arrived roughly every two to three months, so the next one is due, and the pattern in search demand is that questions about penalties and updates spike in the weeks after each one. We will keep this list current; if you are reading this later, confirm the latest entry on Google’s page rather than trusting ours.

How to check whether an update hit your site

This is the procedure we use, and it needs nothing beyond Google Search Console and the list above.

  1. Rule out a penalty first. Open Security and Manual Actions, then Manual actions. If it lists an issue, you have a manual action, which is a different problem with a different fix; go to our penalty recovery guide. If it says no issues were detected, continue.
  2. Pick the update. Find the rollout that overlaps the date your traffic changed. Note its start date and its completion date, which is the start plus the duration.
  3. Compare 28 days before the start to 28 days after the completion. In the Performance report, use the date comparison and look at clicks, impressions, and average position for the site. A broad dip across all three suggests a core update; flat clicks with a sharp fall in impressions on a few pages suggests something narrower.
  4. Look for a step, not a slope. Switch to a daily view across the rollout window. An update produces a change that happens on specific days. A gradual decline over weeks is competition, seasonality, or a page losing its freshness, not an update.
  5. Segment by page. Add the page dimension to the comparison and sort by the biggest drop. Updates very often hit specific pages while the site total holds, because other pages keep gaining; a site-level chart can hide the whole event.
  6. Check the crawl date on the affected pages. Use URL Inspection. If a page lost most of its impressions but has not been crawled since before the drop, Google re-scored it without fetching it. That is the signature of an algorithmic change, and it also means any fix you make cannot register until the page is crawled again.

If you want the same check done for you, with the pages, dates, and cause written up plainly, that is the first step of our Google penalty and core update recovery service. You can also request just the check, free, through our Google update impact check, and have the answer back within one business day.

What each kind of hit looks like in the data

Once you have run the check, the shape of the loss tells you which kind of update you are dealing with. These are the three patterns, with two examples from our own Search Console so the descriptions are concrete.

A core update hit is broad and shallow. Many pages lose a few positions across many queries; average position worsens by a point or two; impressions and clicks both fall, in proportion. Our own data around the May 2026 core update showed this shape: in the 28 days after the rollout compared with the 28 days before, site impressions went from 1,077 to 608 and average position from 8.7 to 10.9, and most of that loss sat on a single page that had been carrying the most traffic, which went from 537 impressions to 118. Nothing disappeared; things slid.

A spam update hit is narrow and deep. Specific pages drop out of the results for their main terms, keep a handful of long-tail impressions, and the rest of the site is untouched. Around the August 2026 spam update, three of our short blog guides did exactly this. One showed 314 impressions across 50 queries on 20 August, 34 impressions on 21 August, and zero from 22 August onward. Its head terms, each worth hundreds of impressions, went to nothing rather than slipping. The pages stayed indexed and had not been crawled since 12 and 13 August, which told us Google had re-scored them without a fetch. That is a diagnosis, not a recovery story; the pages were thin, written quickly to cover their topics, and Google’s scaled content policy describes them well.

A manual action looks like neither. It appears in the report, it names a policy, and it usually affects either the whole site or the exact pages listed. The data is almost beside the point, because the report has already told you the cause.

Recovery expectations by type of update

Honest timelines are the part of this topic most often glossed over, so here they are.

After a core update, Google’s own guidance on what to do after a core update says that improvement may not appear until the next core update runs, because the systems that reassessed your pages run on that cycle. Small gains can show between updates as pages are re-crawled, but the reassessment itself waits. Plan for months, not weeks, and use them.

After a spam update, recovery depends on fixing the cause on the affected pages and on Google re-crawling them. Days to weeks once the fixed page is fetched. Check the crawl date; nothing counts before it.

After a manual action, recovery follows a successful reconsideration request, which Google states can take several days to a few weeks to review, and then the following crawls. The procedure is in the penalty recovery guide.

Whatever the type, a page that is not re-crawled has not been re-evaluated. That single fact explains most “we fixed it and nothing happened” stories.

What to do while you wait

The window between a hit and the next reassessment is where recovery is actually earned. The work that is worth doing, in order:

  • Fix the pages that carried the loss first, using the page-level comparison from the check above. They are the ones Google reassessed.
  • Prefer depth over volume. A short page that covers a topic in outline is what both core and spam updates discount. Rebuild it to answer the question properly, with first-hand detail, or fold it into a page that does.
  • Consolidate pages that compete for one intent. Several thin pages on one question dilute each other and read as scale rather than substance.
  • Strengthen E-E-A-T signals on the affected pages: a named author with real credentials, evidence for claims, dates that are true, and sources a reader can check.
  • Remove or rebuild content produced at scale with little added value. Google’s spam policies on scaled content are explicit, and the pattern is what spam updates now find.
  • Keep the technical foundation clean, so that when Google does re-crawl, nothing gets in the way. See our technical SEO guide.

Our future-proofing guide covers the longer-term version of this list.

Common mistakes around algorithm updates

  • Panicking over normal daily ranking fluctuation. A position or two of movement is noise; a step on a rollout date is not.
  • Assuming every drop is a penalty. Most are not, and the Manual Actions report settles it in a minute.
  • Chasing rumoured fixes for a named update instead of improving the pages that lost.
  • Making drastic changes before diagnosing the cause, such as deleting whole sections or disavowing every link.
  • Publishing more content quickly to make up the loss. After a spam or core update, that is the pattern being discounted.
  • Judging a recovery before the fixed pages have been re-crawled.

Key takeaways

  • Google publishes the start date and duration of every named update. Use that list, not rumour, as the reference.
  • A manual action is the only kind of drop with a report and a formal fix. Rule it out first.
  • Compare 28 days before and after the rollout, by page, and look for a step rather than a slope.
  • Core update hits are broad and shallow; spam update hits are narrow and deep. The shape tells you the fix.
  • A page that has not been re-crawled has not been re-evaluated, so check the crawl date before judging anything.
  • Recovery is earned in the window: depth over volume, consolidation, evidence, and a clean foundation.

Frequently asked questions

What was the latest Google update?
As of 12 September 2026, the most recent entry on Google’s ranking updates list is the August 2026 spam update, which started on 18 August and completed in 2 days and 16 hours. The most recent core update is the May 2026 core update, which started on 21 May. Check Google’s page for anything newer.

How often does Google update its algorithm?
Google makes thousands of changes a year, most minor and unannounced. Named core updates have arrived roughly every two to three months through 2025 and 2026, with spam updates in between.

How do I know if a Google update affected my site?
Rule out a manual action, then compare your Search Console data for 28 days before the rollout with 28 days after it, by page, and look for a change that happens on the rollout dates. The full procedure is in the section above.

Did an algorithm update cause my ranking drop?
Possibly, but not necessarily. Drops also come from technical faults, manual actions, competitors, and seasonality. The date test tells you whether an update is a candidate; the shape of the loss tells you which kind.

How long after an update do rankings settle?
Movement usually continues until the rollout completes, which Google records as the update’s duration, and for a short while after as pages are re-crawled. Judge the effect after the completion date, not during the rollout.

Do all sites get hit by core updates?
No. Core updates reassess everything but only move sites whose pages were rewarded more or less than the reassessment supports. Many sites see no change, and some gain.

Is there a tool to check Google updates?
Google’s own ranking updates page is the source of record for dates and durations. Third-party volatility trackers estimate how much results moved on a given day, which is useful context but is not confirmation that your site was affected. Your own Search Console data is that confirmation.

How do I recover from a core update?
There is no quick fix. Improve the genuine quality, helpfulness, and evidence of the pages that lost, and expect the reassessment to arrive with a later core update. The section on what to do while you wait covers the work in order.

In this series

Deep-dive guides on updates and recovery:

Related reading: our technical SEO guide, SEO strategy guide, and SEO metrics guide. Google’s own guide to debugging traffic drops is worth reading alongside this one.

Think an update hit you and want the cause established from your own data? Our Google penalty and core update recovery service starts with a dated diagnosis. Never ranked well to begin with? Start with a free SEO audit.