Performing well on Google is crucial to website owners, marketers, SEO professionals and everyone who wants to have a visible presence online. Google still enjoys a market share of 93.4% in UK searches and 89.5% worldwide.
It’s important to set up websites and other online assets in accordance with SEO best practices, but you should also be aware that Google is constantly updating the way it ranks websites and conducts searches. It’s vital to stay abreast of these changes if you want to maintain good rankings and traffic stability.
What is a Google Core Update?
Google itself describes its core updates as regular updates that can bring significant, broad changes to the search engine’s algorithms and systems. There can be several in a year (the previous one was in March), and they differ from other changes like spam updates, algorithm tweaks or manual penalties.
The key word here is ‘core’ and the defining property of Google’s core updates is that they are broad. These are changes that tend to affect all content types, meaning it’s even more important to be aware of them.
Key Changes in the June 2025 Core Update (So Far)
As we’ve said before, Google doesn’t ever spell out what is in the updates. So, there is always a period of watching and assessing.
What we can be sure of so far is that:
- The rollout date for Google’s June Core Update was 30 June 2025
- It is expected to take 2-3 weeks to complete
Google has, however, made it clear that changes do start to come into effect from the rollout date itself. Many website owners will not see big changes for a couple of weeks (and some might not see any), but Google SERP or ranking volatility can sometimes be seen more quickly.
Volatility simply refers to measurable fluctuations in search rankings across various industries and hundreds of thousands of keywords.
For the June core update, reports of volatility started to come in quickly. Tools including SemRush, SimilarWeb, SERPStat and others all indicated high volatility at the end of June and start of July.
Glenn Gabe of G-Squared Interactive reported seeing surges and falls as early as 2 July based on the visibility reporting of around 4,000 websites.
With the increasing importance of AI in search, there’s a general expectation that AI-enhanced ranking systems like Google’s MUVERA could be incorporated, but this has yet to be confirmed.
Other changes could include areas such as:
- Featured snippets and People Also Ask sections
- High-value keywords
- Review-based searches
How Does This Update Affect Websites?
The specific effects of Google’s June 2025 core update will start to become more apparent over time, especially over the next two weeks or so as the update completes.
Any major update can affect the way a website performs in Google searches, so it could affect:
- Rankings
- Visibility
- Organic traffic patterns
There will be winners and losers with this update: some websites may gain traffic and perform better in searches while others may perform worse. This can depend on a lot of factors, including content quality, relevance and user satisfaction signals that Google deems important.
Google’s Guidance on Core Updates
Although there may be some technical SEO tweaks you can make, Google itself says that you should avoid ‘quick fixes’ and instead focus on “helpful, reliable and people-first” content. This should apply across the site as a whole but you should pay particular attention to pages that are most impacted by any changes.
You should wait until the core update has finished rolling out (you can check this on the Search Status Dashboard) before evaluating and making any changes. You should also analyse different search types separately. This means checking whether any drop happened in Web Search, Google Images, Video mode or the News tab.
Google has self-assessment questions to help you assess whether your content has those helpful, reliable and people-first qualities Google is looking for.
Try to remember E-E-A-T, Google’s term for the qualities of experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness it looks for. Creating content that fulfils these criteria is central to recovery or growth post-update.
Actionable Steps to Stay Compliant and Competitive
There are a number of things that website owners can do if they fall foul of a core update, or simply want to maintain or improve their performance.
These include:
- Conduct content audits to ensure relevance and quality. This will help ensure your content meets the criteria and standards that Google is looking for, as outlined above.
- Review user experience metrics. It isn’t all about content quality. Technical issues like mobile responsiveness, speed and ease of navigation can also have an effect.
- Improve internal linking structures to distribute authority and aid crawlability.
- Monitor rankings and traffic trends but avoid making hasty decisions during the rollout period.
Has Your Website Disappeared from the Search Results? Here’s How We Can Help
We’ve outlined some of the things to look out for and some actionable steps you can take to recover from – or take advantage of – the changes introduced by a Google core update. There are lots of things that website owners can do themselves but in practical terms it can take time, effort and expertise to respond properly to these important search upheavals.
At Maxweb Solutions, we have plenty of in-depth experience at monitoring Google core updates and other events that can affect the search landscape. We can evaluate what the updates mean in practice and how they are affecting your website’s performance.
We can help by taking steps such as:
- Monitoring and assessing algorithm updates as they take effect.
- Performing comprehensive content and technical SEO audits.
- Developing content and technical strategies aligned with Google’s evolving standards.
Having an effective and experienced SEO partner in place is very important if you want to successfully navigate Google’s update cycles.
Reach Out for Expert SEO Support Today
If you need to recover after an update or want to improve your rankings and future-proof your site against further changes heading our way, our comprehensive range of SEO services will enable you to do just that. Our team is constantly staying on top of the latest SEO developments, ensuring strategies remain adaptable and effective, regardless of whatever Google decides to do next.
Get in touch today on 0151 652 4777 or email us at info@maxwebsolutions.com for more information.
Posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2025 in SEO.
