Algorithm Update Recovery

Google Algorithm Update Key Takeaways

• Google's algorithm updates regularly, re-shuffling rankings

• Algorithm updates focus on finding spam or adjusting weight of various ranking factors like backlinks

• Algorithm update recovery is a slow process that requires overhauling SEO efforts

​

What Is An Algorithm Update?

​An algorithm update generally refers to updates Google periodically makes to its search algorithm. Google's algorithm is a complex system that decides the rankings for organic search results, and a significant change to that algorithm can be the difference between revenue-driving traffic to your website, and losing out.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

  

Why Does Google's Algorithm Get Updated?

Each algorithm update generally focuses on a specific element, and the aim is to encourage websites to behave a certain way. Google may decide to decrease the weighting of backlinks in response to websites heavily focusing on this one metric, so SEO professionals need to either find a new avenue to improve rankings, or work harder to earn backlinks (it's never this simple though, Google can affect the weighting of different kinds of websites, increasing the weighting in some and decreasing the weighting in others, so it is important to know not all backlinks are equal). The rise of generative AI also saw the internet fill with AI-generated content, so a Google update was rolled out to attempt to filter out low-effort content.

​

Generally the aim is for the search results to serve content that is useful to searchers (not traffic that is profitable to website owners), so businesses that aim to serve users first will find traffic improve during updates, or less dramatically, will find no change (which is itself a win sometimes).

​

Can My Rankings Drop Without An Algorithm Update?

 

There are multiple reasons where Google rankings for a website can drop, and an algorithm update is just one of them. This is why SEO specialists will triage your website to ascertain whether it was an algorithm update or another cause such as:

​

• SEO migration issues, due to moving to a new domain, or re-designing your website.

• Backend updates introducing new technical issues throughout the site, including: internal linking issues, page template issue, indexation, canonical URL issues... the list goes on).

​

It's worth noting that since Google and Bing use different algorithms, if rankings change simultaneously on both search engines, then it's likely a technical issue on your end. If rankings drop only on Google, and there is an algorithm update rolling out, then it is likely the result of an algorithm update.

​

Has There Been An Algorithm Update Recently?

 

On June 24, 2026, Google rolled out it's June 2026 Spam Update. This update focused on low quality, unoriginal AI-generated content. Websites impacted by this need to establish a workflow that ensures AI-written content is not simply rehashing content that already exists on other websites, by implementing 'non-commodity' content into the pages that are published.

​

Google tends to publish their major algorithm updates, so bookmarking the Google Search Status Dashboard is always a good idea, but you can follow them on social media such as X.com, LinkedIn, and other platforms to be informed when new updates roll out.

​

​

Will The Next Google Update Affect Me?

Updates will typically affect everyone - websites may have their rankings downgraded for not following the best-practises the update was looking for, with the end result being a drop in SEO traffic,  while others will see their rankings improves as they move into those positions lost. In a competitive niche where the top rankings are held by players with strong SEO, there may be little shift.

​

 

Why Am I Being Punished By This Google Update?

Unless you've had a notification about a manual action, then recent Google updates may have hurt your rankings, and as a result you may have lost out on sales. However, it's important to note it's not a punishment. It simply means Google has changed the requirements for what #1 requires, and while you may have previously fully met those requirements, you now probably mostly still meet them. It's not a punishment, but the website that most meets those requirements will have been rewarded.

 

By working with a SEO specialist that understands exactly what Google is looking for, then recovery and even exceeding past performances is possible (but of course we'd say that). If you're in such a position, here are some places to start the recovery on your own:

​

When did traffic dip?

Use your analytics to assess when you saw the drop in traffic, in order to assign it to a specific Google update. From there, research that update to learn what Google was targeting.

​

What did I do?

 There is no room for ego in SEO. If you maintain a website, you know what content you've been publishing, you know how your website performs and you know how you acquire backlinks. If you were utilising a strategy that was manipulating the search engines, then enjoy that the strategy worked, but now you need to show Google that you'll be following their best-practices. If you were running your website in good faith, then you'll need to disengage from your thoughts on the quality of your website and take steps to rebuild.

​

What next?

The real work begins once you've taken that step back to analyse and reflect, and when you understand what update was looking for. An audit is the first step - going through  your site page-by-page to assess performance and quality. Delete pages that are not ranking, and merge the content into stronger pages. Some pages may need a full re-write. Some may be very out-of-date, some may be thin. Once you've objectively assessed your entire site, then all there is to do is those re-writes, those page deletions, that new URL architecture.

​

How Do I Recover From Past Google Search Updates?

The strategy to recovery really depends on that particular update. We'll summarise the last year's worth of Google updates with a suggestion on how to plan your recovery.

​

If your website has negatively been affected by a Google algorithm update, or your organic traffic has dipped for any other reason, and you're struggling to recover, it may be worth speaking with an SEO consultant to help you strategise and action your recovery. Arrange a free discovery call to walk through your SEO recovery needs.

​

​

​

​

​​

​​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

June 2026 spam update (started: 24 June 2026)

A spam update that focused on low quality, unoriginal AI-generated content. A content quality audit followed by re-writes is the strategy to recovery here. Completed on 26 June 2026.

May 2026 core update (started: 21 May 2026)

A core update, and a broad recalibration of ranking variables, generally focuses on specific sectors. Focus on on-page quality and user experience. Completed on 2 June 2026.

March 2026 core update (started: 26 March 2026)

A core update, and a broad recalibration of ranking variables, generally focuses on specific sectors. Focus on on-page quality and user experience. Completed on 8 April 2026.

​

December 2025 core update (started: 11 Dec 2025)

A core update, and a broad recalibration of ranking variables, generally focuses on specific sectors. Focus on on-page quality and user experience. Completed on 29 December 2025.

​

August 2025 spam update (started: 26 Aug 2025)

A spam update that focused on low quality, unoriginal AI-generated content. A content quality audit followed by re-writes is the strategy to recovery here.​

​

June 2025 core update (started: 30 Jun 2025)

A core update, and a broad recalibration of ranking variables, generally focuses on specific sectors. Focus on on-page quality and user experience.

​

March 2025 core update (started: 13 Mar 2025)

A core update aimed at thin AI generated content. A content quality audit followed by re-writes is the strategy to recovery here.

​

December 2024 spam update (started: 19 Dec 2024)

A spam update that focused on low quality, unoriginal AI-generated content. A content quality audit followed by re-writes is the strategy to recovery here.

​

December 2024 core update (started: 12 Dec 2024)

A core update rolled out at the same time as the spam update.

​

November 2024 core update (started: 11 Nov 2024)

A broad update with impacts on various niches, aimed at rewarding high-quality, user-focused engines.

​

As you can tell, Google is overwhelmingly focused on ensuring sites serve users in an original manner. If you aim to always add to the discourse, rather than add to the echo chamber, then you shouldn't see any Google update drama.

​

My Lead Gen Site Has Been Hurt By A Recent Algorithm Update - What Can I Do?

Google’s algorithm updates tend to focus on specific elements, and if your lead gen website has lost rankings, traffic and revenue from an update you need to familiarise yourself with what the update was looking for. How has Google’s understanding changed? You need to be objective with your website and ask yourself what you were doing that doesn’t align with that understanding.

 

This doesn’t mean your strategy was incorrect. An SEO strategy works until it doesn’t, that's the nature of the channel. Frequently the bar that content must meet simply gets raised. Yes, this puts pressure on businesses owners to produce content at a higher and higher standard and not everyone has the resources, however if the industry experts are in close communication with the SEO team, then the knowledge from the sales experts can be translated into converting website copy by the SEO/content expert.

 

Look at the winners, and the other losers. Try to understand what they have in common. Look at the resources you have at your disposal and try to find how you can improve on what other competitors are doing. No update is as simple as ‘the sites with the most backlinks got the benefit, so I must acquire 10,000 backlinks’. And very often clear, concise content can outrank a huge domain.

 

In past experience, recovery from an update required removal of almost every blog post, as after an audit it was apparent that content that had been ranking top 3 for niche target keywords had lost many rankings, due to the content not having been updated in 5 years. There was no resource to re-write dozens of blog posts, but there was recovery in the core business-driving keywords when the SEO team focused on having in-depth content on the core pages, and removing outdated pages now that Google’s own understanding had improved and the content that was ranking despite being out of date finally lost its rankings. It’s not always the case that Google is out to get an SEO.

 

In the case of this website, informational content can be re-written over time and the removed keywords can be targeted again if the page can be written to a sufficiently high standard.

 

My Side Hustle Website Has Been Affected By A Recent Google Search Update - What Can I Do?

Your side hustle website is likely an important extra source of income that gives you a level of independence from your primary income source. Being negatively affected by a Google update will no doubt set you back financially. Unfortunately, regardless of what kind of website your run, recovering from a Google search update isn't a simple task. It takes objectivity and being able to separate yourself from your site. 

 

The advice is the same: analyse where you have been impacted most, is it sitewide, or is it a specific section or topic? Go through each of the affected pages with an objective, fine-toothed comb, asking yourself the following:

• Is the page serving its purpose well?

• Is the content  up-to-date?

• Is the content asking all the correct questions?

• Is the content concise, clear and focused, or else, is it truly what it says it is about?

• Is there any reason anybody in the world would misunderstand what it is you are trying to say?

• Do any pages rank for the same queries as another page on your site?

​

Using these questions as a guide, you'll probably uncover a host of improvements to make to your most affected pages. Implement the changes page-by-page and you should see traffic return over time. Where multiple pages rank for the same queries, consider consolidating these pages into one single strong page.

​

This is free advice and the same process we implement on any website we work on to provide algorithm update recovery. If you have questions on how to recover traffic on your own, fill in the form and beginning with 'Question', we'll provide you with free advice on what more you can do. We'll be happy to take on your project if you still don't find success in your recovery.

 

Alternatively, North West SEO is an organic traffic specialist with years of experience in assisting businesses recover from Google updates and we'd be happy to chat with you to form an action plan.

​

The North West SEO System

​North West SEO system is designed to work for you. Getting started with us is simple:

• Book your discovery call. You’ll walk us through your industry and what you want to achieve (such as launching new products or services, or to recover lost SEO rankings or to solve traffic suddenly disappearing), and from there we’ll advise how we can assist 

• Following the discovery call, we’ll email you a more-detailed plan and price quote to initiate kick-off of our services, which can be amended.

• Once agreement on the final plan is made, a £100 deposit initiates work beginning, with the remainder being paid monthly once invoices are sent.

 

How North West SEO Can Help

​North West SEO is able to help businesses of all sizes recover their lost search result positions, and our three tier structure is designed to ensure that we do impactful work that suits your budget.​

• Page By Page

• Project-by-Project (One-Off Projects)

• Whole Website (Retainer)

​

Learn more about our three-tier system.

​

Case Studies

With more than 10 years' experience in SEO, North West SEO has helped many businesses grow their SEO and recover lost rankings. Read our case studies to see how we can help you.

​

Algorithm Update FAQ

How long does algorithm update take?

Google's algorithm updates can take any amount of time, from a day or two to several weeks or even a month for larger updates. Some updates pass without website owners and SEOs noticing.

Does a Google algorithm update affect my Bing rankings?

Google's algorithm updates are independent of Bing. The two search engines work very differently in regards to updating their algorithms. Google updates its algorithm regularly and announces these when they are rolled out, but with no fixed schedule. Bing also regularly updates its search engine ranking algorithm, but doesn't announce these, so website owners don't know when their rankings are impacted by a Bing algorithm update.

Does a Google algorithm update affect my ChatGPT and LLM citations?

Your website could see positive or negative effects in LLM citations, if a Google search is performed to answer a prompt.

​

LLM responses are made up of training data elements, and query fan-out (retrieval augmented generation, or RAG) elements, and the query fan out varies by platform.

 

Regarding ChatGPT, which retains the lion's share of LLM traffic. If ChatGPT only relies on its training data to answer the prompt, then the most recent Google update won't impact the probability of your website being cited. If a query fan-out was performed using Bing, then your website won't be affected. If a Google search was performed, then this may affect your citations.

​

Gemini is a Google product, so this LLM only relies on Google searches for retrieval augmented generation of live information, so a Google update will impact your citations.

​

Based on current observed behaviour, Claude and Perplexity seem to use different search engines for query fan-outs, so a Google update should not affect citations on these platforms.

​

It's worth pointing out that LLMs combined make up a small percentage of website traffic, so advice right now is to focus on Google rankings, and let the LLM citations take care of themselves.

What's the difference between a core update and a spam update?

Spam updates and core updates can vastly affect your rankings, but these two types of updates are typically looking for different things.

 

A core update focuses on ensuring the Google search engine keeps up with the times. The search engine needs to understand synonyms, needs to know what entities are, and the core update focuses on these. The core update will also add value or de-value some ranking factors. For instance, over the years, the mighty backlink has been devalued. Or at least the highest authority websites that link equity flows from are re-ranked or re-weighted (for instance what should help a website more? A link from the BBC, from Sky News or from Gov.UK? At least, that's the gist of it. Some domains are re-evaluated into junk too.).

​

Spam updates specifically look at SEO strategies where the intention is to game the algorithm. Keyword stuffing, PBNs were strategies in the past that were hit by spam updates. Today it is AI slop and low quality programmatic SEO. Note: there is nothing 'wrong' with using AI to improve organic channel visibility - however search engines have a responsibility to their users to ensure only quality results are surfaced. Websites that want traffic for the sake of it as opposed to websites that exist to help users will naturally be de-prioritised (they can choose to bid for traffic with PPC).

​

SEOs that use strategies that lean too heavily on one lever over another will find their website can be at risk of either a core update or a spam update. When using sustainable slow-burn strategies that don't over-rely on a single tactic, then algorithm updates should pass by with little negative impacts, and positive impacts rather; but even unchanged rankings during a Google update is a victory. 

​

How do I recover from a Google algorithm update ?

Recovery from Google updates is a major project to undertake, as it requires figuring out what the update targeted and undertaking actions to rectify. Depending on the severity of the update, recovery could require SEO actions over the course of a few weeks or the best part of a year.

 

In the past we've undertaken update recoveries where the culprit was simple: too much thin content across the /blog/ subfolder. Easy to diagnose, but rectifying the issue was a mixture of SEO content consolidation, re-writes and internal link building.

​

Another instance involved the update updating the algorithm's understanding of two synonyms: 'business electricity' and 'business energy'. While internally we knew 'business energy' to include commercial electricity contracts AND commercial gas contracts, the overwhelming number of searches for 'energy' were for commercial electricity. The algorithm simply updated to reflect more 'business electricity' in the 'business energy' SERPs. This was a major change, and required consolidating an entire high-quality core subfolder to regain rankings for 'business electricity' and 'business energy'.

Is a Google algorithm update a penalty?

While traffic declines from Google updates can be severe, an algorithm update is not a penalty. Penalties refer to manual actions from Google, and these will be visible in Google Search Console. An algorithm update is simply a reshuffling of the rankings in the index, so it is best to see it as other results being preferred over yours, as opposed to a penalty where the search engine actively demotes you.

​

How do I know if my website was impacted by a Google update?

If the drop in organic traffic is due to an algorithm update, then an audit will uncover if it was an external issue, or a Google update. Use Google's search engine status to establish if there was an algorithm update during the time your traffic dropped, and then use search console data to establish the degree to which your site was affected. Then plan your remedy.

​

Contact us today by filling in the form above to arrange a free discovery call to see how we can help you navigate Google's updates.