What to Do When a Google Algorithm Update Shakes Your Rankings

Google algorithm updates do not follow a fixed calendar; there are a few big core updates a year, with narrower ones in between. With each one, thousands of site owners do the same thing on the same morning: open Search Console, see the chart bend downward and want to change something immediately. That reflex is the most expensive mistake you can make during an update.

Below is a calm path to follow during and after an update. The update's name or date does not matter; the logic is the same every time.

The first 48 hours: change nothing

Updates are not applied all at once; the rollout takes days, sometimes weeks. The rankings you see in the first days are not the final rankings. Google runs tests during the same period too, so a page can drop ten positions one day and come back the next.

The only job in the first 48 hours is keeping records. Which keywords, which pages, how much did they move? Which day did it start? Without this record, two weeks later you cannot tell what really changed from what was temporary.

The two most common panic moves are hurriedly rewriting the pages that dropped and disavowing external links in bulk. Both are hard to undo. When the page recovers on its own two weeks later, you are left holding the text you just wrote; and some of the links you disavowed were actually carrying value.

It is very easy to confuse a change you made just before the update with the update's effect. If you do not have a change log, start one now; every release, every content revision, every technical fix, with its date.

Look at the whole market: SERP volatility

The most practical way to tell whether your drop is tied to the update is to measure the total movement across the keywords you track. That is what we call SERP volatility: a score summarizing how much the results pages shifted from one day to the next. On normal days it is low; during an update it jumps.

When volatility is high, you are expected to move too, and that alone is not a sign of trouble. When volatility is low and only you drop, that suggests a problem specific to you, unrelated to the update. In weranklab the SERP volatility score, calculated per project, sits next to competitor visibility; if competitors are shaking on the same keywords, the picture becomes clear. You can read how these measurements work on the rank tracking feature page.

Look at how individual competitors were affected too. If sites built like yours fall together in an update while sites built differently rise, you get a clear clue about what Google is rewarding. For example, if an online shoe store's category pages drop while independent review blogs rise, Google is giving weight to informational intent for that query.

When the dust settles, read the data properly

Once the rollout is complete, usually within two or three weeks, you see the lasting picture. Now is the time for analysis.

1. Look at page groups. Compare page types rather than individual keywords: product pages, categories, blog posts, comparison content. Updates usually target a certain page type or content approach.
2. Study the winners too. Focusing on the drop is natural, but if some of your pages rose in the same update, you are already doing what Google likes. What do those pages have in common?
3. Look for intent shifts per query. Search the keywords you dropped on. If the page types on page one differ from your page, Google has reinterpreted that query's intent.
4. Read traffic and ranking separately. Sometimes the position holds but clicks fall; then look for a new block added to the results page.

Not every site that drops in an update did something wrong. Google sometimes reinterprets queries and sometimes promotes certain content types; your page may be good and still no longer count as the best answer to that query. Making this distinction is the precondition for deciding what to fix.

A fictional example: on the site of a bakery in Brooklyn, the 'sourdough bread recipe' post dropped while local keywords like 'park slope bakery' held steady. The update most likely promoted more experienced sources for recipe content. The job is to add the bakery's own process, photos and tested measurements to the recipe post; the rest of the site needs no attention.

What does the helpful content principle mean?

The recurring theme in Google's updates of recent years is who the content was written for. Content made for search engines, meaning pages written to rank for a keyword that add nothing real for the reader, is the group that loses most in updates. Content written for the user stands on the other side.

You can run a first pass over your own pages by asking these questions:

• Does this page read as if someone who knows the topic wrote it from their own experience, or is it a summary of other pages?
• When the reader finishes, do they have a real answer to their question, or do they have to go to another source?
• Does the page exist only because a certain search volume exists? If you have five very similar posts on the same topic, the answer is probably yes.
• Does the content deliver what the title promises? In a post called 'The 10 best running shoes', readers can tell if none of the shoes was actually tried.
• Can the main content be found easily among the ads and side elements?

If the answers are weak, the fix is usually not writing more content. Merging weak pages, adding experience and concrete information, or removing pages that carry no value at all delivers more on many sites than a pile of new posts.

On an online shoe store this often looks like hundreds of product pages copying the manufacturer's description for each model, plus blog posts covering the same 'best running shoes' topic under five different titles. After an update, merging those posts into one thorough guide and adding the store's own fit and sizing notes to the product pages works better than producing new content.

E-E-A-T: Google's measure of trust

E-E-A-T is the abbreviation of four concepts from Google's quality rater guidelines: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. It is not a direct ranking factor; it is a framework describing the direction in which Google develops its algorithms. Its weight grows in topics that affect people's lives, such as health, finance and law.

In practice, supporting E-E-A-T means work like this:

• Make it clear who wrote each post. The author's name, a short bio and their connection to the topic should be visible.
• Back up claims. If you state a fact, show where it comes from; if you recommend a product, make it clear you tried it.
• Keep contact details, the about page, the returns and privacy policies complete and easy to find. They are dull pages, but they are basic indicators of trustworthiness.
• Use your own data, your own photos, your own case examples. A photo a Brooklyn bakery took in its own kitchen is always more convincing than a stock image.
• Get others in your industry to cite you; authority is a signal that comes from outside.

When to act

Wait until the rollout finishes, read the data in page groups, then start with the weakest and most affected group. Make changes in small steps and date each one. Full recovery from a loss in a core update usually waits for the next core update; until then, these records are the only way to see whether what you did worked. When setting priorities, look at business impact: a drop on a revenue-generating category page comes before a drop on a blog post that had no traffic anyway.

If you found nothing, that is an answer too. Sometimes the right move is not to change anything on the site but to decide which new queries to go after. Refreshing your keyword research lets you replace the lost keywords with queries where Google now prefers your type of page.

Without tracking, an update is lived blind

Every step in this guide depends on knowing where you stood before the update. If you do not record where you rank for each keyword, you cannot measure the drop, see the recovery or compare with competitors. Regular rank tracking, a volatility score and change notes do all three jobs at once. For setup details see the rank tracking guide, and for the full list of drop causes see why Google rankings drop.