Google’s latest big algorithm, the Google March 2025 core update, has now completed rolling out.
These core updates are always a big deal in the SEO community and reporting on the completed rollout date is always important because, once they’re over, we should have a better view of what was included and what the effects are.
The March 2025 core update started on March 13th 2025 and ran for 13 days and 21 hours, completing on March 27th 2025. The official incident affecting ranking is detailed here.
You can see the dates of the March 2025 core update and all the other Google ranking updates on their official page.
Volatility
One hallmark of this update was the level of reported volatility. When updates roll out, there are fluctuations in rank for some websites, and those most affected tend to influence the levels of volatility detected.
One of the tools that monitors such volatility is the SEMrush Sensor. You can see from the screengrab of the Sensor data that volatility was high during the 30 days to March 26th the range was “very high” or a “Googlequake!” as SEMrush have called it.
Who Was Affected?
Sometimes core updates are general and affect everyone. At other times there may be specific targets. In the recent past we’ve seen scaled content, site reputation, and expired domains targeted by Google’s web spam algorithms.
This time, the chatter in the SEO community is about forums. Whilst Reddit is allegedly “untouched” a lot of other forums have been hit. Other sites that have purportedly been negatively affected have included “websites with large volumes of programmatically generated content, especially those created primarily for SEO purposes”.
The Google March 2025 core update also apparently affected a wide range of industries, including retail, government, and content publishers, indicating that this update had a broad impact across various sectors.
Quality as Always
One of the other bits of feedback that’s common in these algorithm updates, as always, is that it’s the low quality websites that have been affected. That’s a good thing because good quality content should remain unaffected.
I was concerned about this website when I saw an increase in impressions on Monday 24th March suddenly
drop away again mid-week only to bounce up again on a Sunday of all days. Of course, this is a specialist website focusing on providing digital marketing and other SEO consultancy, so the volumes and audience are quite niche. However, the trend since the beginning of the year has tended to be upwards.
I’ll keep you posted as to how this pans out, but it may drop back again or this could be a positive sign of sustained increases. I’ll revisit this Google Search Console impression data once I have the weekday figures.
Websites are living, breathing things and I’m regularly posting and updating, so the impression trend should be upwards anyway.
Have You Been Hit?
If you’ve been tracking your own website traffic and, as a result of the March 2025 core update, your impressions, and traffic are down, then there are no specific instructions to recover.
The advice is that you should analyse the data that shows what has been affected and take measures to rectify any quality issues. Small drops in rank may just be the usual fluctuations. You should be careful not to “overoptimize” any pages when such changes occur.
However, if the drops are significant then you should conduct a deep analysis of your content. Be completely objective about how your pages look and the quality of your content. If in doubt, then use a third party who is not associated with your site to make a solid assessment. Independent SEO consultants are a good choice 😉
I’m Available to Help
If you need assistance with a self-assessment or a second opinion of your pages, then let me know. Call me on 01252 692 765 or leave me a message on my contact form and I will get back to you. We can look at your pages together and formulate a strategy to improve your website.