Everything You Need To Know About The Late 2023 Google Updates

If you’ve checked your Google Analytics stats lately and noticed a sudden drop in traffic, you’re not alone!

Website owners across all industries have been negatively impacted by recent updates to the Google algorithm, so it doesn’t seem to be limited to certain types of sites.

There have actually been THREE separate Google updates in the past two months, so if you weren’t impacted by one… odds are you might have been affected by another.

As with all algorithm updates, Google endeavors to reward higher quality websites that are serving content that users are searching for. Not only are they tweaking the algorithm so that it can better detect quality content, but also so that it accounts for changing user behaviour and preferences.

Just remember: Google updates happen often, so if your traffic drops after one… it might go back up after the next update. So don’t worry too much and just keep working hard at publishing quality content.

With that said, these are the Google updates that have been rolled out in August, September, and October 2023:

August 2023 Core Update

This Google core update rolled out in just over two weeks (22 August – 7 September 2023).

As is often the case after a Google core update, there was ample volatility in the search rankings after it finished rolling out. However, it didn’t necessarily *feel* like it, because in the weeks leading up to the update, search rankings were already pretty volatile.

mildura web design

According to SISTRIX, “large music and reference domains [were] affected” more than other websites/verticals.

What to do if you were impacted by this Google update: Nothing, other than continue to post high quality, relevant, helpful content on your website!

September 2023 Helpful Content System Update

Unlike a core update, this one is an update to Google’s helpful content system. Its main focus is to weed out any *unhelpful* content and instead, reward pages with helpful content with higher search rankings.

In particular, it aims to ding content that was written primarily to rank on Google search rather than to help people – i.e., SEO-first content.

It was rolled out from 14-28 September 2023.

What to do if you were impacted by this Google update: Reevaluate your content strategy. Focus on publishing articles aimed at helping people first and foremost, particularly your target audience or customers; then, optimise that content. Consider removing any articles you wrote specifically to rank on Google search that isn’t really helping any users.

October 2023 Core Update 

This is the third Google core update of 2023, and second in two months. It was rolled out from 5-19 October 2023.

Unlike the August core update, this one was felt more strongly by website owners; however, the October update was much less volatile in comparison.

web design mildura

As you can see in the above graphic, the October update was much more up and down, but less volatile overall

What to do if you were impacted by this Google update: Nothing, other than continue to post high quality, relevant, helpful content on your website!

Contact the Mildura web design experts at Rock Solid Marketing Mildura to get your website SEO-friendly today!

Scroll to Top