By Google announced their latest Core Update (previously called a “Broad Core Update”) on August 15th, 2024. Many SEOs and publishers are hopeful this update will reverse much of the damage caused by Google’s September and March 2024 Core update or even the first Helpful Content Update in late 2022. Like every major announced Google update there are already a slew of predictions, guesses, and other claims being made about this update. Our goal in this document is to give you the facts to help you better understand this update now and long after it rolls out.
Today we released the August 2024 core update. It continues our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.https://t.co/T6Qt0JUoWt
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 15, 2024
Google did not give us any direct guidance on how long this update will take or exactly what will change / improve with it. However, in the announcement Google did say they believe this update will help surface content in their search engine “that people find genuinely useful”. In their brief blog post Google also stated “This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high quality sites, including small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content, when relevant to users’ searches.”
“This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high quality sites, including small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content, when relevant to users’ searches.” – Google Announcement about the August 2024 Core Update
There has been a lot of anticipation and hope about this update. Small one-topic publishers that create hyper-focused content were largely demolished in the last two rounds of updates, especially those focused on travel, product reviews, and those that participate in affiliate programs. In their place Google dramatically elevated Reddit, Quora, and Forbes among other publications into high ranking positions shifting millions of clicks from small sites to large sites.
Not all SEOs are convinced that this update will provide any relief to small publishers at all. Instead, SEOS such as Cyrus Shepard and myself believe that this update and all others since the introduction of the Helpful Content Classifier in August of 2022 are actually designed to demote pages following good SEO practices but that are not on large brand websites.
Here is everything we know about the Google Search August 2024 Core Update
August 2024 Core Update Vitals
- Date Started: August 15th, 2024
- Date Completed: September 3rd, 2024
- First Impact Reported: Unknown
- Most Impacted Industry(ies): Unknown
- Most Impacted Site(s): Unknown
- Most Impacted Website Types: Unknown
- Most Impacted Content Types: Unknown
- SEO Change Proven to Improve: Unknown
- First major impact reported: No impact reported yet
August 2024 Core Update Facts
- This is the 4th announced update in 2024 by Google
- The update began rolling during back-to-school for much of the country. Traffic losses without ranking losses, especially on the first few days, might be attributed to seasonal factors like this instead.
- There was a bug on day 1 of the update that impacted a “large number” of searches
Google’s August 2024 Core Update Resources
Google – What to know about our August 2024 core update
Google – Google Search’s core updates and your website
Media Coverage of Google’s August 2024 Core Update
Search Engine Land – Google August 2024 core update rolling out now
Transparency Report
We add this section when an update may have impacted our clients or our portfolio of websites. Below you’ll find positive and negative impacts to client websites / our websites if those impacts were deemed statistically significant AND if we believe we understand one or more of the reasons behind the adjustment.
No impact yet
Google August 2024 Core Update Help
No helpful tips yet – once we know more about this update we will add more here