Google Update Trend: More of the Same

No more big swings

I’m going to be honest with you: I miss the days when Core Updates were Big Events.

Any time an update dropped in the good old days I knew it was either going to be either mass/personal euphoria or total soul-crushing despair.

Now it’s just meh.

Google dropped a Core Update on June 30th and no one is really talking about it.

A big part of that is the amount of people who’ve left the SEO game post-Helpful Content Update. If your traffic is zero and you have no intention of trying to recover it, then a Google update is a nonevent.

You can’t lose traffic if you don’t have any.

But it’s also because Core Updates just aren’t meaningful events anymore.

It seems like the days of huge changes to the algo are dead and gone.

Now each update is just more of the same.

If your traffic/rankings have been increasing then they’ll continue to increase. If they’ve been decreasing, they’ll continue to decrease.

I’m sure part of this is due to Google’s internal focus on AI. Their legacy search business just isn’t a priority anymore.

But it’s also because Google has already figured out what they want the SERPs to look like and they don’t need to experiment anymore.

They want Reddit/UGC, e-com, and videos. They don’t want content sites (other than a few EXTREMELY high-quality ones). They know what they want and they’ve already figured out how to deliver it. Now updates are just about tweaking things on the margins instead of shaking everything up.

I predict that this trend is going to continue.

If you’re hoping that a Core Update is going to bring your site back from the dead: keep dreaming. It ain’t happening.

That’s not to say that there aren’t any sites that have recovered from the HCU decimation, because there definitely are.

The ones I’ve seen do well have all focused heavily on quality in their content (only reviewing products they’ve actually tested, not using AI slop, filming legit videos).

The days of SEO hacks are over (with the notable exception of parasite SEO which is still printing).

I don’t blame you if you think the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. If you want to give up, then give up.

But if your strategy is to wait and pray that Google will save you with an update…good luck.