The May 2026 core update has finished rolling out. Google began the update on 21st May and it completed on 2 June. If your rankings have been moving over the past two weeks, this is why. Now it’s done, the advice below applies directly: don’t rush to react. Wait a full week before drawing any conclusions from your data.
When a Google Core Update starts rolling out, the instinct is almost always the same.
Something is moving, so something must need fixing.
I see it every time. Impressions, rankings and visibility shifts. And suddenly the pressure to act kicks in.
But a core update doesn’t mean Google is asking you to make changes.
More often than not, it’s asking you to wait, observe, and understand.
Why Core Updates Create the Urge to Act
Core updates introduce uncertainty. And in SEO, uncertainty is uncomfortable.
When performance starts moving, it’s easy to treat early data as instruction. A spike in impressions can feel like momentum. A dip can feel like something breaking.
In reality, early movement during a core update is usually reassessment.
Google is updating how it understands relevance, quality, and intent across the index. That process takes time. What you see in the first days is often noise, not signal.
First, Confirm the Update Is Actually Running
Before you read anything into your data, check whether an update is even live.
Go to the Google Search Status Dashboard. It tells you exactly what’s rolling out, when it started, and whether it’s finished. It’s the single source of truth, and it should be the first place you check when seeing volatility.
If rankings are moving and there’s no confirmed update, you’re likely looking at normal volatility, a technical issue on your own site, or seasonal change. Those need a completely different response to a core update. Knowing which situation you’re in stops you fixing the wrong thing.
Why Early Impression Changes Are Not a Reliable Signal
Impressions are one of the first metrics to move during a core update, but they’re also one of the easiest to misread.
Increases in impressions can happen because:
- Pages are being tested for broader query sets
- Rankings are fluctuating across multiple positions
- Google is reassessing where a page might fit, not where it will settle
More impressions don’t automatically mean improved performance.
And fewer impressions don’t automatically mean decline.
Until rankings stabilise and engagement behaviour becomes consistent, impressions alone don’t tell you what Google has decided.
How to Tell If Your Site Was Actually Affected
Not every dip during a core update means you were hit. This is the question everyone asks first, so here’s how to actually answer it.
Wait for the rollout to finish. Mid rollout data is incomplete. Rankings shift, settle, and shift again as Google works through the index. A drop in week one often recovers before the update even completes. Drawing conclusions now is reading a story before it’s finished.
Then wait a further week. Once the dashboard confirms completion, give it another seven days before comparing anything. Google’s own guidance points to this, the dust needs to settle before the data means anything.
Compare like for like. When you do review, compare the period after the update against an equivalent period before it started, not against your best ever week. Match the days and account for seasonality.
Look for sustained patterns, not single days. A one day drop is just noise. A consistent decline across two weeks on the same group of pages is a signal.
One thing worth highlighting right now, the Search Console Links report is currently showing reduced or zero link counts for many sites. This is a known, widely reported bug and not evidence your backlinks have vanished. Don’t make any link decisions based on it during this period.
What Google Is Actually Doing During a Core Update
Core updates are not about penalising individual pages or sites.
They’re about reweighting signals at scale.
During a rollout, Google is:
- Reviewing how content satisfies intent
- Adjusting how quality and relevance signals interact
- Testing visibility across different query contexts
That’s why movement can look messy at first. Pages can rise, fall, then rise again.
This is exactly why early intervention is risky.
Why Making Changes Too Quickly Can Set You Back
Acting too early during a core update often creates more problems than it solves.
Making changes mid-rollout can:
- Mask what Google is reassessing: If performance shifts after changes, you lose clarity on whether the update or your edits caused it.
- Reset learning on pages that were improving: Pages that were being positively reassessed don’t get the chance to stabilise.
- Introduce unnecessary variables: Multiple changes at once remove your ability to diagnose what actually matters.
During a core update, clarity is more valuable than speed.
What I Focus on During a Core Algorithm Update
Instead of changing things, I observe.
This is the most valuable window for understanding how Google views a site.
During a rollout, I focus on:
- Consistent movement, not daily swings. Patterns over time matter more than individual days.
- Page behaviour, not sitewide panic. Which topics, or intents are moving together?
- Engagement and conversions, not just visibility. A ranking change without behaviour change often isn’t the problem it appears to be.
There’s a big difference between something breaking and something being temporarily caught in reassessment.
When to Review the Data
The best time to act is after the update has finished rolling out and performance has settled.
At that point, you can:
- Compare before and after performance, with context
- Identify clear winners and losers
- Understand whether shifts are intent based, quality based, or structural
What to Do After a Google Core Update Finishes
By now you’ll know the Google Status dashboard. Check it again to confirm the rollout has fully completed before you start reviewing.
Right now, if you haven’t already, you’ll want to be in your Google Search Console. Here you will be able to see overall performance before, during and after a core update.
How I Review Performance After an Update
A quick glance at Search Console can make performance look stable when it isn’t. Sitewide numbers hide where the real movement happened. Here’s what the actual process looks like.
1. Segment before you read anything. Don’t look at blended sitewide traffic. Group your pages by type; blog posts, service pages, product pages, and by topic. Movement almost always clusters. One content type or one topic cluster will have moved while everything else held steady. Blended numbers hide that completely.
2. Compare at page level in Search Console. Go to Performance > Search Results. Set the date range to compare the period after the update against an equivalent period before. Switch to the Pages tab and sort by the difference in clicks. Now you can see exactly which URLs gained and which lost.
3. Separate ranking loss from behaviour change. A page can hold its ranking but lose clicks, that’s a CTR or SERP feature issue, not a core update issue. A page that genuinely dropped position is a different problem. Check the Queries tab for affected pages to see whether position actually moved.
4. Look at engagement on pages that kept rankings. If a page held its position but engagement fell, that tells you something about how the page is being received that a ranking number alone won’t.
5. Map movement to intent. Did informational pages move while commercial ones held? Did one topic cluster drop together? Patterns like these point to how Google has reassessed your content’s relevance, and that’s what tells you whether you need to act or wait. If several pages on the same topic all moved together, it’s worth checking whether they’re competing with each other in the first place, which is a sign of keyword cannibalisation
What you’re separating, always: something genuinely breaking, versus something temporarily caught in reassessment. They can look identical in week one, but they look very different by the end of the core update.
A Google Core Update is not a call to immediate action.
It’s an opportunity to observe how Google is interpreting your content, your structure, and your relevance at scale.
Let the update finish, review performance calmly, and then act with clarity.
That’s how you make improvements that actually last, and the difference between reaction and strategy in SEO.
If you’re coming out of a core update unsure whether to act, wait, or explain changes internally, this is usually the point where a second set of eyes helps. I work with teams to interpret post update performance calmly and decide what’s actually worth changing, rather than reacting to noise.
If you’re curious about what Google is up to, I share regular updates over on LinkedIn
