Over the past year, Google has significantly shaken up its search results. In 2024 and early 2025, we saw several major algorithm updates that changed the rules of the game for SEOs, content marketers, and website owners. The main focus is on quality, expertise, and real value for the reader.

The search engine has become even more demanding of content, UX, and E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness). This means that template texts, SEO stuffing, and “watered-down” content no longer work.

In this article, we analyze what Google SEO updates were released from March 2024 to March 2025, how they affected search results and traffic, and what to do to avoid falling out of the top (and if you do, how to regain your position).

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The Biggest Update in Years: March 2024 Core Update

When: March 5 to April 19, 2024

Duration: 45 days

What happened: Google updated the search core, several key algorithm systems, and introduced new anti-spam policies.

‍This Google core update is, without exaggeration, historic. Google has promised to reduce the amount of low-quality content in the SERPs by 40%. And indeed, many sites have lost positions or traffic, especially those that:

• copied content from other sources;
• wrote texts exclusively for keywords (classic SEO stuffing);
• published generated texts without quality checks;
• did not add anything new or deep to the topic.

Google has once again emphasized that you need unique and useful content. And it should be based on E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, credibility, and reliability.

It's official: Google aims to reduce “unoriginal, low-quality content” in its search results by 40%.

See notes to Google system releases.

Why Did This Happen?

The SEO community is discussing that Google's new algorithms are closely related to the introduction of Search Generative Experience (SGE) - AI blocks in search. They answer queries immediately in the search results, displacing similar content.

Bernard Huang explains: "Google has started to penalize monotony, especially in topics where the answers are similar to each other. That's why Reddit and Quora started to grow so rapidly - they have unique opinions, experiences, and contexts.”

What else has changed:

• Google's manual evaluators assess the author's experience - and this affects the ranking.
• Content without a unique approach simply duplicates what SGE already knows.
• Opinion, real experience, and point of view have become the most valuable assets in content.

What to Do After the New Update in SEO?

Google hasn't given a clear checklist, but the reaction of the SEO community can be used to draw up unofficial “rules of the game”:

• Write for people, not for keys. If the content is created only for search, Google will notice it.
• Answer the request in full. But without unnecessary volumes - FAQs written “just in case” no longer help.
• Forget about AI content as a scaling tool. Google is already good at recognizing it.
• Don't publish too much content, even if it's high-quality. This can arouse suspicion.
• Do not edit the date of publication. Otherwise, you may be suspected of manipulation.
• Be careful with advertising. Too much advertising is a disadvantage in the eyes of Google.
• Become a trusted brand. This is the most stable strategy in the face of uncertainty.

Pandu Nayak, Vice President of Search at Google, in an interview with The Verge explained in more detail who the current latest google seo updates are aimed at:

• Sites that generate thousands of articles a day, whether by low-paid authors or tools, and optimize this content for search. For example, like spam obituaries do.

• Reputable sites that rent out some space for spammy nonsense.
• They gave 60 days to sites that bought drops to publish search engine-friendly trash. An example is The Hairpin.

Experience of Promodo Experts

Case 1: Auto parts niche - traffic drop and return after the December update

One of our clients operating in the auto parts niche experienced a significant drop in traffic after the March Google core algorithm update.

The site suffered from an overly broad catalog, duplicate pages, and a poor structure. We managed to restore traffic only after the December update - after major changes that we implemented back in November.

What we did:

• Narrowed the assortment: we removed a significant part of the products that had long been out of stock and were no longer planned to be sold.
• Rebuilt the site structure: analyzed competitors in the niche, removed duplicate categories (for example, situations where a category and a subcategory had the same name).
• We switched from an external product database to an internal one, which significantly improved the site's speed.
• We optimized indexing: while the site was being updated, some high-frequency categories were not yet fully collected, so the filters were not opened for the index.
• We continued to build link mass: during this period, we actively wrote SEO texts for the categories and developed the link profile.

Case 2: Used car niche - growth during the latest SEO update, but a drop after

An interesting situation happened to another client in the used car category. At the time of the March 2024 update, the site even showed an increase in traffic. However, after the new Google SEO update was completed, the positions began to sink - and declined gradually throughout the year. The recovery is still ongoing.

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What we did:

1. We updated the text on the home page and categories: rewrote old texts and updated meta-data.
2. Added a branded video to the home page: this increased brand trust and improved the time spent on the page.
3. Optimized the FAQ: the main Used Cars category had a duplicate block of questions and answers in subcategories - we removed the duplicates and opened the answers themselves (previously they were hidden behind the Close/Open plates).
4. We worked with the blog: old materials were rewritten, updated or deleted, and new publications on relevant topics were added.

After the March 2024 Core Update, it became clear that superficial optimization no longer works. Even large sites with a history can lose ground if the structure is confusing and the content is irrelevant or duplicated.

Google Fine-Tunes SpamBrain: June Spam Update

Launch date: June 20, 2024

Duration: 7 days

Focus: improving search spam detection

‍In June, Google released another anti-spam update that affected websites around the world. The main focus was on improving the AI-based SpamBrain system, which was taught to better detect manipulative practices and new types of spam in the SERPs.

Important: this update is not related to Google's policy on site reputation abuse.

What Should You Do If Your Rankings Have Fallen?

Google recommends that you first review your compliance with anti-spam policies. This is the basis for restoring positions in the long run.

What Have We Seen in Practice?

SEO analyst Cyrus Shepherd analyzed 50 news sites to find out what factors could have influenced the loss of traffic after the June and subsequent Google SEO latest updates.

Factors with a significant correlation with traffic decline:

• Anchor text:

Sites with a large number of anchor variations in internal and external links lost more traffic.

Correlation: -0.337 and -0.352

Recommendation: Reconsider aggressive linking, especially with spammy/unnatural anchors.

• Frequency of publication date updates:

Paradoxically, the winners of the updates had older pages (average age - 774 days), while those who lost traffic updated content too often (average age - 273 days).

Recommendation: update content only when it is really needed - not just for a “fresh” date.

• Clickable headlines:

Headlines with numbers and adjectives lost more traffic.

Correlation: -0.297 (numbers) and -0.420 (adjectives)

Recommendation: give preference to simple and clear headlines.

• Schema markup:

Excessive use of structured data was negatively correlated with traffic.

Correlation: -0.314 and -0.381

Recommendation: do not overload pages with Schema markup - it can look like manipulation.

What Did Not Have an Impact?

Among the parameters that did not show a significant correlation with the drop in traffic:

1. Table of contents, number of words, presence of Google Business Profile, and author information did not show a significant correlation.
2. Sites with shorter articles had slightly better results, but the connection is weak.

‍Google may lower rankings for excessive optimization and manipulative tactics.

August Core Update: An Opportunity for Small Websites?

Launch date: August 15, 2024

Duration: 19 days

Completion: September 3, 2024

‍The next Google update took place in August and was a continuation of Google's course to improve search quality after a wave of criticism that accompanied the Helpful Content update in September 2023. At that time, a significant number of small publishers lost their positions — often unfairly. The new update partially corrected this situation.

What Has Changed?

Some websites that were affected by previous major Google algorithm updates have partially regained their positions.

‍Google has improved its recommendations for creating useful content, once again emphasizing user benefit.

‍Recommendations after the update:

• Update your content regularly — it should be accurate and relevant.
• Publish materials that are 100% relevant to the search intent.
• Don't stray from your topic — Google pays close attention to relevance.

‍After the update, Google's Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, gave an interview to Barry Schwartz. Here are some important points:

• 5,000 changes per year — that's how many updates Google makes in total. But only a few are really significant.

• Assessors (quality evaluators) check updates before launch. Their feedback can delay or cancel a release.
• Forums and social networks are growing — even more traffic is expected for Reddit, Quora, etc.
• Massive use of AI content can lead to a decline in traffic.

Promodo's Experience

One of the most telling examples of how this update affected the performance of a website in our experience concerns a blog in the electronics niche. After the August update, the client's website traffic began to gradually decline — and this decline intensified with each subsequent update.

Reason: Google stopped associating some of the content with the main theme of the site — so-called “non-thematic” articles simply disappeared from the top rankings.

‍What we did:

‍We developed a new content strategy focused solely on relevant topics. Now, content is created and optimized to clearly match the niche and search expectations of users.

‍Work is currently underway to restore traffic and rankings to the site.

November Core Update: A Blow to Low-Value SEO

Launch: November 11, 2024

Duration: 24 days

Completion: December 5, 2024

‍This update was aimed at combating excessive SEO optimization that does not benefit visitors. The focus is on the real value of content, not technical tricks.

‍Link to official documentation: Google System Release Notes

Key changes:

• Removal of “thin” content — pages with no substantive value.
• Increased visibility of pages with useful media — videos, tables, infographics.
• Focus on UX — content must be created with the user experience in mind.

Conclusion for websites: it's time to move away from “SEO for SEO's sake” and focus on usefulness, deep content, and structure.

Our case study: a website in the marketing niche

After the update, one of the projects experienced significant changes:

• Clicks have fallen by half compared to the period before the recent Google updates for SEO
•  (mid-November), although the site had been growing steadily before that.
• Impressions are growing (+20%), but pages, especially after the latest updates, have started to drop out.
• Mostly pages that seem like junk are dropping out, but they may be similar clusters, which causes cannibalization.
• Home page: clicks and impressions are stable, but the share of clicks by brand has fallen by 15% (weak brand, ORM/SERM needed).
• Blog: clicks have dropped by 34%.
• Services: impressions have increased 5 times since October.
• Pages with obvious cannibalization receive significantly more impressions after the update.

‍Work to restore traffic to the site is currently ongoing.

December Core Update: Relevance Above All

Launch date: December 12, 2024

Duration: 6 days

Completion: December 18, 2024

‍This is Google's fourth and final major update in 2024. Its goal is to improve ranking systems so that search results are even more relevant and useful.

‍Interesting fact: the update was launched just a week after the November update was completed. Google explains the frequency of releases by the gradual updating of various core systems.

According to analysts, volatility in searches was higher than in November but lower than in August and March.

Link to official documentation: Google System Release Notes

What the Tools Recorded:

SISTRIX reported that the first changes appeared on December 15, three days after the official launch.

• In the US, traffic increased on pinterest.com and bbc.com, while in the UK, the positions of some eCommerce projects improved.

• At the same time, news sites and online stores began to lose traffic.

Additional factors:

The Google update coincided with:

• Twitter migration → x.com
• Virgin Holidays content transfer → virginatlantic.com

‍It is not yet clear whether these events are directly related to the update, but domain transfers always affect search visibility.

December Spam Update: A New Strike Against Manipulation

Launch date: December 19, 2024

Duration: 7 days

Completion: December 26, 2024

This broad update covered most languages and significantly changed the positions of sites with spam characteristics. The goal is to strengthen the detection of search spam, including new types.

Important: the update did not affect link spam or site reputation abuse policies — these continue to be enforced through manual penalties.

What Does Google Recommend?

Affected websites should:

• Check compliance with Google's anti-spam policies.

• Eliminate violations and wait for re-evaluation by the systems — this may take several months.
• Regularly track position changes and analyze the reasons for losses.

‍In his video, Glenn Gabe confirms that the December update affected more than just classic spam. Among those affected are:

• Doorways and directories embedded in regular websites.
• Scaled content that “imitates expertise”: authors analyze SERP, copy “People also ask” blocks, and create longreads with a complete thematic layout.
• Programmatic projects that grew rapidly under the November update — millions of pages of generated content.

Experience of Our eCommerce Clients

In practice, we are already seeing cases where traffic to eCommerce sites has declined after the latest Google algorithm updates.

‍It is not yet possible to restore positions, as this is not a matter of temporary filters, but of fundamental changes in ranking principles.

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Niche and branded websites are increasingly appearing in search results, while general-interest projects are gradually losing ground — even those that previously held a strong position at the top.

‍This once again confirms that Google is consistently moving toward personalized and specialized search results.

Google March 2025 Core Update – What We Know So Far

Start: March 13, 2025

End: March 27, 2025

Probable testing: February 26 or March 5

‍Google has announced a new core update to its search algorithm that affects all types of content. The goal of the update is to further improve the quality of search results, with an emphasis on relevance, usefulness to the reader, and reducing the presence of low-quality content.

‍The SEO community suspects that the first changes to SERP began to be tested even before the official launch. The most likely dates are February 26 or March 5.

Key Changes

1. Integration of the Helpful Content System: The Helpful Content System has become part of the core algorithm, which has strengthened the evaluation of content quality based on EEAT criteria (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness).
2. Algorithmic improvements:

• Possible updates to NSR (Neural Semantic Retrieval), Panda, Navboost, and IS (Information Satisfaction), although Google has not officially confirmed changes to these components.
• NSR and Panda have strengthened requirements for content quality and expertise.
• Navboost has likely changed the evaluation of behavioral factors such as bounce rate and time on site.

Impact on Websites

• EEAT and authorship: Websites without clearly identified authors or with low expertise (especially in YMYL niches) lost ground. High-quality content with strong EEAT gained an advantage.
• Behavioral signals: Websites with high bounce rates or traffic from low-quality sources have seen their rankings decline due to changes in Navboost.
• Content: The update has strengthened the filtering of automatically generated, thin, or irrelevant content.
• SERP volatility: After the update was completed on March 27, fluctuations in search results gradually stabilized, but some sites may still experience changes.

‍On X and forums, SEO experts note that sites with optimized EEAT and high-quality UX have seen growth. On the other hand, sites with low-quality content have suffered.

Actions for webmasters:

1. Update or remove low-quality content.
2. Add information about authors and their expertise.
3. Optimize behavioral factors (time on site, navigation, mobile version).
4. Monitor positions through Google Search Console, Semrush, or Ahrefs.

How Does This Look in Practice?

During the March 2025 Core Update, many sites experienced instability in their rankings — positions and traffic fluctuated from day to day. This is a typical scenario for major updates, when Google “fine-tuned” signal after signal and tested the results in real time.

A typical situation: a website initially grows, then declines.

Case study: Our client's website in the truck niche saw a noticeable increase in traffic at the start of the update. However, within a few days, traffic stagnated and then declined. This behavior is not an exception, but rather a sign that the algorithm is still “checking” relevance in dynamics.

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Content Strategy for 2025: How to Adapt to Google’s Updates

1. Create content focused on users, not algorithms

• Focus on the needs of your audience – research the interests, queries, and pain points of users by analyzing search queries, social media, and reviews.

High-quality structure of materials – use a clear hierarchy of headings (H1, H2, H3), bulleted lists, short paragraphs, and highlighting key points.

• Simplicity and accessibility – explain complex topics in simple language, use infographics and examples to improve understanding.
• Variety of formats – add videos, podcasts, and interactive elements that increase user engagement.
• Natural text – avoid keyword spam and use keywords in a natural context.
• Do not publish AI-generated texts without editing. Use AI only as a draft, not as finished content.
• Do not update the date without changes to the text. This can damage user trust and negatively affect SEO.

2. Ensure the relevance, accuracy, and expertise of materials

• Content updates – regularly review old articles, update outdated data, add new information, and check sources.
• Fact checking – use reliable sources (official websites, scientific research, authoritative media), and provide links to them.
• Stick to a narrow topic. This allows you to systematically develop expertise and improves ranking
• Expert approach – involve specialists in writing content, add author biographies, certificates, and confirmation of their experience.
• Transparency of information – explain data collection methods, analytical conclusions, and sources so that users can verify the information.
• Geographical relevance – adapt content to different countries and markets, taking into account local characteristics and regional demands.
• Build brand expertise through niche expertise. Regular, high-quality content within a single topic increases audience trust and authority in the industry.

3. Use E-E-A-T as the basis for your content strategy

• Experience – publish content based on real experiences, case studies, tests, personal stories, and product reviews.
• Expertise – indicate authors with relevant qualifications, involve professionals in writing and editing materials.
• Authoritativeness – strengthen the site's reputation through media mentions, backlinks from reliable resources, and participation in industry events.
• Trustworthiness – use HTTPS, avoid clickbait, ensure honesty in the presentation of information, and provide contact details and a privacy policy.

Conclusions

Google's new SEO updates this year will place even greater emphasis on quality content based on experience, expertise, and trust. Websites that publish useful, structured, and verified content will rank higher in search results and generate more traffic. Make sure to keep a hand on the pulse, or partner with someone who does.

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