March Core Update & Spam Updates: Four Major Trends

While Google has not provided a specific timeframe for these sites to expect any type of traffic recovery, they have recently indicated that recovery is possible with the right amount of effort and time. According to John Mueller:

“It’s just that some kinds of changes take a long time to build up, and that applies to all kinds of systems & updates in Google & in any other larger computer system. Saying that this is specific to the helpful content system, or to core updates would be wrong & misleading.

There is, however, the additional aspect of the “core update” being about how our systems assess content overall, how we consider it to be helpful, reliable, relevant to users’ queries. This does not map back to a single change that you can make on a website, so – in my experience – it’s not something that a website can just tweak overnight and be done with it.

It can require deep analysis to understand how to make a website relevant in a modern world, and significant work to implement those changes — assuming that it’s something that aligns with what the website even wants.”

This guidance is somewhat promising for the many site owners hoping for any glimmer of hope after losing the majority of their SEO traffic in recent months, but for many sites, the revenue losses stemming from this 8-month drop in traffic have made it hard to sustain the business, leading to many shared complaints from site owners across X, LinkedIn, Google’s forums and comments on SEO publications.