The Google March 2023 Broad Core update finished rolling out yesterday morning at about 10:30 am ET. It took 13 days to roll out, kicking off on March 15th at 10:30 am ET and completing on March 28th at 10:30 am ET.
Please note that the website shows this update started later in the day, 7 hours later than it actually did. But the update started at 10:30 am ET. It shows the later date because that is when the data when entered when Google added rankings to the status dashboard. Here is what that staus page shows, but again, the timestamp on this one on March 15th is a tad off:
We saw big volatility with this March 2023 core update on March 16th and then again around March 23rd/24th. In my opinion, this was a pretty big update that touched down fast and hit hard.
There has been a bit of volatility and chatter in the past 24 hours but nothing like at the beginning of the update or like we saw later last week.
Google March 2023 Core Update
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google March 2023 Broad Core Update
- Launched: March 15, 2023 at around 10:30 am ET
- Rollout: Completed March 28, 2023 at around 10:30 am 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: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update but so far, this seems to be a typical core update that reaches wide and the impact is fast.
- Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets 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.
Tracking Tools On March 2023 Core Update
Here is what the automated tracking tools show for this March 2023 Broad Core update over the two-week or so period.
Semrush (the mobile chart is off the rails, so I am not sharing that one, something has to be wrong...):
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the more recent SEO chatter about this update, chatter from the past 24-hours or so from the WebmasterWorld forums and comments here:
The last day of the core update I was penalized and especially a website that copied me rose above me. Even websites that copied my images as well, my face my internal links, with a google search they are ahead of me in the first position and I in the fifth position. My domain have an authority of 53 and website with 0 authority and 12 authority are above me. I have been working 4 Years everyday with top notch quality articles and I never copied anything from anywhere. Do you want the icing on the cake? Do you want the icing on the cake? The guy who copied half my site sent me an email bragging about his positive google results after this core update. I'm so demoralized that you don't get the idea.
I see some big changes starting at 11am GMT - Maybe it's the last leg of March core update.
I am definitely seeing major update signs. The SERPs are all over the place today again. Major ranking shakeup not just for us but our competitors
Major league throttling going on today.
Brand website with around one million exact brand search dropped completely out of search for brand - google now ranks its totally bad clones that are even redirected to the original site as soon as you browse on those sites - that algorithm update really ranks totally shit pages so far - hey google anything fine ? is chatgpt killing you ? hope so - guess its time to fire the next 10 000 workes - what a piece of shit greed company - stop acting like you own the internet.
After months of success this update has wiped out alot of my traffic. I find it so crazy that months of fairly aggressive growth since November has now been wiped out in one swift swoop. Can the parameters really change that much? And if so, is that really fair to its users. SEO now is just a mess. Hard to report and explain this to a business owner that in the space of a week you can go from things looking extremely positive, to extremely poor.
Even though keywords are ranking in second position. Hardly any impressions can be noticed. One day things look ok, the next day nothing.
My blog has been grounded.
Take a look at these examples of sites that got hit and then came back from Glenn Gabe:
Again, many sites continued on the same trajectory either continuing surging or dropping, but some did reverse course. For this site, it shows how core head terms can make a big difference. It dropped heavily for important keywords initially, but a # came roaring back recently: pic.twitter.com/rWIk36n2Wy
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 29, 2023
Previous Broad Core Updates
This March 2023 core update took 13 days to roll out, and it has been just over six months since the last update, which was last the Septmeber 2022 core update which was on September 12, 2022. Then the May 2022 core update on May 25, 2022. Prior to that was the November 2021 core update on November 17th through November 30th. The previous core updates prior to the November update were the July 2021 and then a month prior to that with the June core update. The one before that was six months before the June update, on December 3, 2020, named the December 2020 core update. Before that was a 7-month gap where on May 4, 2020, the May 2020 core update. The one prior to that was on January 13, 2020, the January 2020 core update and the one before that was on September 24, 2019, the September 2019 core update. Oh, before that was on June 3, 2019, the June 2019 core update and I can go on and on.
I hope you all did well with this update.
Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.
