What to Actually Do After a Google Core Update Hits You

A core update drops, your traffic falls, and the instinct is to change everything at once. That's exactly how you make recovery impossible to measure.

Diagnose Before You Touch Anything

1. Segment the drop by page type and query. A site-wide narrative is rarely accurate.
2. Compare your affected pages against what's now ranking above you. What do they have that you don't?
3. Rule out technical causes first: indexing, crawl errors, and site speed regressions.
4. Make one category of change at a time, and give it a full update cycle before judging results.

Most "core update recoveries" aren't recoveries at all. They're sites that were already planning the right improvements and got there before the next update.