Google announced that the next core update could be launched “in the coming weeks.” No specific date has been set since the core update is still undergoing testing, evaluation, and approval for integration into Google Search.
What Google said. Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, commented:
“We’d tell you when the next core update will be if we knew. But we don’t know exactly yet, that’s all. These aren’t scheduled to a particular day. The ranking team makes changes, tests those, evaluates those and eventually we get a launch date. There have been many times I could have said ‘Core update next week!’ because everything was on track for that to happen, but then there’s a need to do a bit more work or other things that might cause a pushback. I would expect we’ll see one in the coming weeks, because that fits in with our general cycle. But precisely when, that’s just not known yet.”
Previous core updates. The last significant core update was the March 2024 core update, which commenced on March 5, 2024, and concluded 45 days later, on April 19, 2024.
Here’s a timeline of recent core updates:
- The March 2024 core update ran from March 5th to April 19th.
- The November 2023 core update ran from November 2nd to November 28th.
- The October 2023 core update ran from October 5th to October 19th.
- The August 2023 core update ran from August 22nd to September 7th.
- The March 2023 core update ran from March 15th to March 28th.
- The September 2022 broad core update was less impactful and ended on September 26th.
- The May 2022 broad core update was a significant and fast update.
- The November 2021 core update.
- The July 2021 core update.
- The June 2021 core update, which was slow to roll out but significant.
Other updates. Recently, there was a spam update named the June 2024 spam update, which began on June 20, 2024, and completed on June 27, 2024.
Since then, there have been no additional confirmed updates, although numerous unconfirmed updates have occurred.
Why we care. Many sites have been hoping for improvements following the September 2023 helpful content update. Most sites affected in September have not seen recoveries. These sites were looking for recovery with the March 2024 core update, but that did not happen.
They are now hopeful that the upcoming core update will bring the desired improvements. Whether that will happen remains to be seen.
