Google October 2023 Core Update Finished Rolling Out

Oct 20, 2023 - 7:51 am 449 by
Filed Under Google Updates

Google Core Update Melted

It took almost the full 14 days, but the Google October 2023 core update is now officially done rolling out. The October 2023 core update started rolling out on October 5, 2023, at 11:54 AM ET and was completed on October 19, 2023, at 11:08 AM ET.

Keep in mind that Google just this morning finished rolling out the October 2023 spam update, which started several hours before the core update was released and finished several hours after the core update finished.

Here is a screenshot of the status page showing when this update started and ended:

Google Search Status Core 2023 Update

And here are the posts on X with those announcements:

Documented Volatility For October 2023 Core Update

This core update was a pretty big one, it devastated a significant number of SEOs and websites. I cannot say enough how big of an impact this update had within the SEO community and probably wider.

As a reminder, the October 2023 core update was announced on October 5th but we didn't see significant movement until October 9th and much larger movement October 10th. Then this past weekend we saw even more volatility and sites being hit - it was just massive.

Google October 2023 Core Update Quick Facts:

Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:

  • Name: Google October 2023 Broad Core Update
  • Launched: October 5, 2023 at around 12 pm ET
  • Rollout: Completed on October 19, 2023 at around 11am ET
  • Targets: It looks at all types of content
  • Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards great web pages
  • Global: This is a global update impacting all regions, in all languages.
  • Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update but so far, this seems to be a typical core update that reaches wide and the impact is fast.
  • Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets and more.
  • Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google's core update advice.
  • Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. Maybe this is what we saw the past couple of weeks or all those unconfirmed Google updates.

One thing that was bugging me is that Google stopped using the term "broad," as in "broad core update" and is now calling them "core updates." I asked why and was told, "No particular reason. Core seems to cover these types of updates enough." We did ask Google about broad vs not broad core updates before.

Overlapping Updates

When we asked why Google overlapped two updates, Google's Search Liaison said on X, "Normally, we do try to keep updates like these apart, but it's not always possible. But anyone trying to understand changes, it's pretty straight-forward. If you don't spam, and see changes, then it might be the core update. If you do spam and see changes, it's probably the spam update. In particular, We released a spam update yesterday. Sites that don't spam shouldn't see changes because of this. We released a core update. That's different from a spam update. It's a general improvement in how we rank. Many sites will see no changes because of this, and it has nothing to do with spam."

Tracking Tools On October 2023 Core Update

Here is what the automated tracking tools show for this October 2023 Broad Core update over the two-week or so period.

Semrush:

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SERPmetrics:

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Advanced Web Rankings:

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Accuranker:

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Mozcast:

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Cognitive SEO:

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Algoroo:

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RankRanger:

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SERPstat:

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Wincher:

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SERPwoo:

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seoClarity:

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Previous Broad Core Updates

Here is a list of the most recent core updates we've seen since Google started to confirm them. Previously we nicknamed them Phantom updates or unconfirmed updates.

Recent Google Search Updates

As I said above, Google has been busy with pushing out search updates. Google is currently rolling out the October 2023 spam update.

We had an unconfirmed update that felt big, around October 1st. Google did not confirm this update, but some are speculating it is either a tremor from the helpful content update or an early spam update consequence.

The September 2023 Google helpful content update started on September 14th and finished rolling out on September 28th.

And it was only 6 weeks ago when Google started to roll out the August 2023 core update. That update started on August 22nd and was completed on September 7th, only four weeks ago.

Plus, to add to all of this, Google had a massive indexing issue on October 5. Good luck debugging and analyzing all of this at the same time.

I hope you all did well with this update and only saw positive changes.

Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.

 

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