The Google August 2024 core update finished rolling out yesterday at around 3 pm ET. It took over 19 days and four hours to roll out, starting on August 15th at 11 am and finishing on September 3rd at 3 pm. The update was expected to take a month but this Google algorithm update ended up taking less than 3 weeks to roll out.
Google posted the update over here saying, "The rollout was complete as of September 3, 2024."
When Google announced this update, they said, "latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months." "This update also aims to better capture improvements that sites may have made, so we can continue to surface the best of the web," Google added. This includes "small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content on relevant searches," Google wrote.
Did We See Improvements
Did it? Well, we did for the time since the September 2023 helpful content update see some sites move up and see ranking improvements. We actually saw small adjustments early on and while some of those vanished, some continued to surge on.
Overall, it seemed like most sites were worse off, at least, from an SEO perspective. The poll results showed:
- 44% had rankings/traffic drops
- 27% had rankings/traffic increases
- 29% had no change
And while some sites saw improvements after being hit by the helpful content update, most did not. Of those that did, only some saw really big improvements, like full recoveries, but most of those saw minimal gains compared to their positions prior to the September helpful content update. The rest stayed the same are now worse off.
Google August 2024 Core Update Quick Facts:
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google August 2024 Broad Core Update
- Launched: August 15, 2024 at around 11 am ET
- Rollout: Completed 19 days later on September 3, 2024 at around 3pm ET
- Targets: It looks at all types of content
- Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards great web pages
- Global: This is a global update impacting all regions, in all languages.
- Impact: The normal core update stuff around helpful content but this one should also reward small and independent publishers.
- Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets, AI Overviews and more.
- Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google's core update advice.
- Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. Maybe this is what we saw the past couple of weeks or all those unconfirmed Google updates.
Google August 2024 Core Update Details
Google wrote on its blog when it first started to roll out:
Today, we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high quality sites, including “small” or “independent” sites that are creating useful, original content on relevant searches. This is an area we’ll continue to address in future updates. This update also aims to better capture improvements that sites may have made, so we can continue to surface the best of the web.
We’ve also updated our help page about core updates, which includes more in-depth guidance for those who may see changes after an update.
No Feedback Form
As far as I can tell, Google has not yet posted a feedback form for this update. I did ask Google, and it seems like they won't.
But I am speaking with Danny Sullivan, the Google Searhc Liaison, about this update later this week, so I will make sure to ask a ton of questions that I know a lot of you want answers on.
I will publish that later.
Google Tracking Tools On August 2024 Core Update
The update took 19 days to roll out, so here are those volatility tracking tools and what they showed. Yea, it was a heated few weeks:
Previous Broad Core Updates
Here is a list of the most recent core updates we've seen since Google started to confirm them. Previously we nicknamed them Phantom updates or unconfirmed updates.
- August 2024 Core Update : August 15, 2024 through September 3, 2024
- March 2024 Core Update : March 5, 2024 through April 19, 2024
- November 2023 Core Update : November 2, 2023 through November 28, 2023
- October 2023 Core Update: October 5, 2023 through October 19, 2023
- August 2023 Core Update: August 22, 2023 through September 7, 2023
- March 2023 Core Update: March 15, 2023 through March 28, 2023
- September 2022 Core Update: September 12, 2022 through September 26, 2022
- May 2022 Core Update: May 25, 2022 through June 9, 2022
- November 2021 Core Update: November 17, 2021 through November 30, 2021
- July 2021 Core Update: July 1, 2021 through July 12, 2021
- June 2021 Core Update: June 2, 2021 through June 12, 2021
- December 2020 Core Update: December 3, 2020 through December 16, 2020
- May 2020 Core Update: May 4, 2020 through May 18, 2020
- January 2020 Core Update: January 13, 2020 through mostly January 17, 2020
- September 2019 Core Update: September 24, 2019
- Google June 2019 Core Update: June 3, 2019 through June 8, 2019
Previous Helpful Content Update Impact
Here is the list of the previous Google helpful content updates:
- Septemebr 14, 2023 - September 2023 Google helpful content update - completing on Septmeber 28, 2023
- December 5, 2022 - December 2022 Google helpful content update, completing on January 12, 2023
- August 25, 2022 - August 2022 (original) Google helpful content update, completing on September 9, 2022
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the chatter from the SEO industry:
— Ryan Stack (@thestacklife) September 3, 2024
https://t.co/tq2pWENgod pic.twitter.com/RmuupgjNEU
— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) September 3, 2024
August core is complete. It did not take a month. Rather, 19 days.
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) September 3, 2024
I'll start digging in. Got a bunch of nice recoveries (some partial) on sites that have given me permission to share info on. So stay tuned. I'll be analyzing which pages improved and sharing my thoughts as to… https://t.co/d3CrlauWNt pic.twitter.com/6RDP08NtHf
Complete waste of time. I even saw a drop again.
— carl broadbent (@UKCarlBroadbent) September 3, 2024
Seems like there was a handful of sites that recovered but more Reddit posts pushed to the top in my niche.
Typed in few local searches. More Forbes, Reddit, Quora and other huge publishers like Angis etc that mass produce pages.
— Mr. Fundman💰 (@mrfundman) September 3, 2024
Where is small business? Where are the small publishers?
Of course an intern writer in San Francisco knows better what HVAC I should hire in Brooklyn. Or…
Shorter than I expected, but I'm good with the outcome. Have started working on a piece that could indicate some of what worked and is repeatable for other sites.
— Leigh :) Stark 🦄 (@Leighlo) September 3, 2024
If I have time and you want a second set of eyes on your site, drop a note in reply. I'll see what I can do. https://t.co/tp24naF0oc
Got most of my rankings back but the image thumbnails at serps are still all gone. Does it make sense? Anyone I can turn to about it? pic.twitter.com/0QXa9g86ud
— Don't Blink (@leaco) September 4, 2024
50% up in Google traffic. Still monstrously down since September '23.
— Rasmus Barslund (@RasmusBarslund) September 4, 2024
They took away my cake but gave me a slice back.
— Robert (SEO, Online Marketing, Growth) (@pinch_of_black) September 4, 2024
I got 1/3 rd of my traffic back compared to where it was prior to September HCU. I'm happy tho would rather all my traffic back. Feel sorry for those with no change or went down further.
— PAPPACLARTUS (@_GTArena_) September 4, 2024
At WebmasterWorld:
Hopefully they understood they made a mistake (too much spam) and aborted the whole thing. Although I don't count on it.They reinstated that air humidifier and retro game site and that was really the main goal of this "core update" anyway.
Traffic dead today for me.
This has been the strangest update. Last September my impressions dropped by 50% overnight, but clicks from search continued their gradual upward trend into December. Then impressions and clicks began to decay, dropping by 40% at the beginning of August. Now after the August update impressions are up 70%, clicks up only 10%. Overall I'm off about 15 to 20% from my December peak. Lets see if the new upward trend continues into December!
And comments from this site:
After four years of great happiness, I am unfortunately giving up on my website that brought me so much joy. I went from 50,000 users per day to 500 after the update on August 15th. I can't continue because I relied on the income from my site. I am just waiting for confirmation that the update is complete to see what I will do next in life.
Well, that sucks. Our Google traffic has been up nicely (with a percentage increase in the double digits) over the last few days, but after the devastation that began in 2023, any increases in actual unique visitors and pageviews are hardly enough to matter.
So, the core update is done and my rankings and traffic are the exact same.I guess that's good.
No new drops on my other sites at least.
They clearly tried to address authority abuse. There is slightly less. But there is still a lot of room to improve.And reddit ranking in every single serp is just sad.
traffic absolutely down the toilet today. lol.
today pretty much the same low level as it was before the update. The rankings look a bit better but traffic is nowhere to be found.
Experienced the same too. Had a couple of days where it increased slightly, but then the traffic slowly vanished. Very frustrating because I thought this core update would "reward smaller websites".
Pursuing rankings is nonsense at this point. I have actually gotten some of my old rankings back. Traffic is the same. What is the point?
Forum discussion at X.
