After 14 days, Google’s March 2025 Core Update – the first core update of this year – has finished rolling out. Google’s Search Status Dashboard has been updated, saying “the rollout was complete as of March 27, 2025.”
Google updates have historically struck fear into the hearts of SEOs and website owners – and with 2023’s Helpful Content Update still fresh in people’s minds, it’s understandable. But as with all things, knowledge is power, and understanding these updates is key to navigating them. Along with the reminder that most websites see little to no impact from core updates.
So what have we learned from the March 2025 Core Update?
What have Google said about the March 2025 Core Update?
On 13th March 2025, Google announced the Google March 2025 Broad Core Update. At the time, they said via social media that “this is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searches from all types of sites”, adding “we’ll also continue our work to surface more content from creators through a series of improvements throughout this year”.
This second comment about surfacing content from creators was met with a somewhat frosty response from several creators in the SEO community, who have been dissatisfied with Google’s response to the hit many sites took in 2023’s Helpful Content Update.
Google also noted on the 13th March that the rollout of this core update was expected to take two weeks – so they’ve stuck to their word on that, at least.
Was the update rolling out before 13th March?
This core update didn’t come as a surprise to most of the SEO community. For one, Google told us at its Search Central Live event I attended in Zurich last December that we’d be facing “more updates, more often”. With SEOs facing four core updates in 2024, waiting until March felt like a bit of a ticking time bomb, with many people surprised we hadn’t seen an update this year already.
Secondly, SERPs were seeing noticeable volatility in the days leading up to the rollout. Glenn Gabe predicted this on the morning of 13th, saying on X that “Core is close IMO. I’ve heard from a number of sites [sic] owners this week seeing update-like volatility, including losing Discover visibility completely, top stories, top rankings vanishing, then returning a few days later.”
However, upon reaching out, Google confirmed to Glenn that the rollout date for the March 2025 Core Update was indeed accurate, meaning that any pre-update volatility would be for unrelated reasons. Google is continually releasing “smaller core updates” to improve search quality, which it isn’t obligated to tell us about – so this stacks up.
What impact has the March 2025 Core Update had on websites?
While some core updates result in only minor volatility on the SERPs, the March 2025 Core Update has been making waves. Visibility tool Sistrix’s Google Update Radar showed noticeable SERP volatility during the update, with peaks around 16th March.
Source: Google SERPs Radar. SISTRIX UK data. 27th March 2025
Source: Google SERPs Radar. SISTRIX US data. 27th March 2025
Semrush notes similar volatility in its Sensor tool, highlighting specific high volatility in industries such as shopping, arts & entertainment, news, and home & garden. The only industry noted to have “normal” visibility – unusually for a core update – has been health.
Source: Semrush Sensor. 27th March 2025
Sistrix’s blog on the March 2025 Core Update highlights a number of domains that have either seen improvements in visibility, drops, or even recovery from previous core update losses – really highlighting the variety of outcomes across sectors and website types.
The “winners” from Sistrix’s set of analysed sites range from motors.co.uk to dunelm.com to teachmeanatomy.info – a site that had previously seen big visibility drops following the December 2024 Spam Update. It seems, therefore, that this core update has been at least somewhat indiscriminate when it comes to industry or website type.
Reduced visibility for forums (finally)
Reddit has been a thorn in the side of many SEOs and website owners for the last couple of years, having seen huge surges in visibility on Google’s SERPs. This isn’t hugely surprising when we consider Google and Reddit’s relationship – since 2024, Google has been training its AI models using content from Reddit.
And it’s that, along with some mid-2023 core updates – most notably the “hidden gems” update – that has contributed to the increased visibility of forum sites across SERPs.
Until now?
Lily Ray has recently noted on LinkedIn that she’s seen a number of forum sites (albeit not Reddit itself, of course) experience sharp drops in visibility, particularly those that had benefited from the 2023 algorithm updates.
Similarly, the Sistrix blog mentioned above notes Quora as one of the biggest losers in the UK, seeing a 22% drop in its visibility, alongside many customer forums on hmrc.gov.uk – indicating that not even .gov sites are immune.
Search visibility for customer forums at HMRC, with blue pins indicating previous core updates.
Could this signal the end of the forum domination era? The cynic in me wonders if the traffic lost by smaller forums is simply going to be gained by Reddit, but only time will tell.
Continued downfall for programmatic content
…that has been created purely for search engines.
I nearly had ya there, didn’t I?
Google has confirmed time and time again that it has nothing against using AI in content. However, using solely AI to mass-produce content solely with the intention of ranking well on search engines is generally seen as a no-go – yet it’s been used by countless websites over the last few years.
And one by one, these sites have been struggling. Whether it’s drops in traffic or Google simply dropping pages from its index, manipulating the SERPs like this just isn’t a viable SEO strategy.
And anecdotal evidence from across the industry has hinted that these kinds of sites have – unsurprisingly – been suffering again in the March 2025 Core Update. Local SEO Guide has reported drops in visibility for www.bluettipower.com, home to thousands of seemingly templated blog posts.
Back in December, I headed off to Zürich for some Christmas markets Google’s Search Central Live event, where John Müller was directly asked about programmatic SEO and using AI to mass-generate hundreds of pages. I speed-typed his answer, which went something like:
“The challenge is – if you want to put something out that looks really bad for your company, go for it – but you also have to accept the risk that comes with that. If the bulk of your content is not that great, then Google might look at your site overall and think it’s not that great. And anything else on your site, or anything new you put out – Google might look at your site and think ‘what should I do with that new page – maybe we won’t crawl it, maybe we won’t index it, because we don’t know if we can trust this site’. In my view, if you want to make your site look worse, then go for it – but you have to face the consequences.”
He also said this minutes after standing in front of a giant screen that had the words “Programmatic SEO? Meh.” written on it, so make of that what you will.
Sites are seeing reduced Google Discover visibility
In an SEO landscape dominated by AI overviews and organic shopping listings, the conversation around Google Discover has died down somewhat. But for many sites, visibility through Google’s personalised content feed has been a key source of traffic in recent years.
And it’s these sites that have been reporting significant traffic drops with this core update, including in the pre-update volatility reported in the week leading up to the rollout. Google has said this update isn’t focusing on any one area of search over others, but the number of people taking to social media to share their drops in Discover traffic is definitely significant.
Tracking Google Discover traffic is best done via Google Search Console, making this the best way to assess if your articles and stories are impacted by this reported drop.
What have we seen at Digitaloft?
As an SEO agency, we get the benefit of access to an amazing portfolio of clients, allowing us to analyse real site data from a variety of sites across a range of niches.
Plenty of our SEO and digital PR clients have seen improvements in organic traffic and visibility since the rollout of the core update.
- A travel client has seen nearly a 20% increase in clicks, looking at the last 30 days vs the previous period.
- A toy retailer has seen over a 100% increase in clicks, looking at the last 30 days vs the previous period, with a noticeable, sustained increase since 14th March.
- A gambling site’s daily impressions have nearly doubled since the beginning of the rollout.
But the vast majority of Digitaloft’s clients?
Absolutely nothing.
Their Search Console, Sistrix and Semrush graphs are showing no sign of movement.
And to us, this feels like a sign that we’re doing things right. Often, an uplift in traffic during an algorithm update may reward ongoing improvements since a previous core update, but mostly, this ongoing SEO effort will simply see small, compounding rewards outside of core updates.
Of course, these three improving domains span different niches and different business models. When we consider their current organic strategies, all three are investing heavily in digital PR and authority-building – both on and off-site.
I’ve thought for a while that investment in brand authority is going to play an increasingly vital role in SEO, particularly in our AI-driven era, so that development of brand may well be playing a role in these sites’ success here.
Over the last year, we’ve also worked with a number of sites who have suffered badly from previous core updates or the Helpful Content Update. One site came to us believing they’d been hit by the Helpful Content Update, with clicks to some pages down by as much as 96% YoY. A few months later and the site was outperforming peak levels, and since then, each core update has brought improvements in organic traffic.
The March 2025 Core Update, however, has impacted the site minimally, although it continues to perform well.
In fact, across the handful of sites that we’ve worked with that have suffered from past algorithm updates, none of them have seen any noticeable movement – either in a positive or negative direction.
How do you protect yourself from Google Core Updates?
The answer here is very simple: good SEO.
To any website owners with a solid SEO strategy behind them, a Google Core Update shouldn’t be a sign for concern. Google itself says that “most sites don’t need to worry about core updates and may not even realize one has happened” – which is often what we see for our clients at Digitaloft.
And of course, the aim of these algorithm updates (whether or not everyone in the SEO community agrees) is to improve the quality of search. So if you’re providing genuinely helpful content, free from spam, and with users – not search engines – at the heart of your strategy, you shouldn’t have much of a reason to worry.
What should you do if you’ve been hit by a Google Core Update?
Point number one: don’t panic, and don’t take drastic action.
Core updates can take many weeks to roll out. If you’re seeing volatility – whether that’s drops in visibility, rankings or traffic – the first thing to do is wait until the update has finished rolling out. You can find out when the update has finished rolling out via Google’s Search Status Dashboard or social media. Volatility during the rollout of a core update is normal, and we’d always advise against taking action until the end of an update’s rollout.
Once an update has finished rolling out, you can investigate traffic changes via Google Search Console – looking at clicks to a site a week before and after the update. Have there been any changes? Do they impact any area of the site or specific page types more so than any other?
Aleyda Solis also has an incredibly helpful ranking shifts Looker Studio template that can do this analysis for you – identifying changes and trends across queries, pages and visibility types.
If you have seen noticeable drops in rankings, for example (we’re talking about a drop of more than a few positions, here), Google has a great self-assessment checklist to help you ensure you’re creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. This includes:
- Content and quality questions
- Expertise questions
- Page experience questions
- Information about E-E-A-T and the quality rater guidelines
You might need to take a fresh look at the “why” behind your content – is it created to provide value to real people, aligning with the principles of E-E-A-T, or is it solely to boost search engine rankings?
If it’s the latter, you might want to reconsider your SEO strategy – if you’ve not been negatively impacted by this algorithm update, you may well be in the future.
—
Struggling to navigate the ever-changing search landscape and Google’s algorithm updates, or worried about what the future might look like for your site? We’re Digitaloft, an SEO agency that works to connect the dots between SEO, content and digital PR by creating revenue-generating organic strategies led by your commercial goals. If you’re in need of help, why not request a quote?
