Google has confirmed that the volatility we all saw prior to the official announcement of the Google March 2025 Core Update was not related to the March 2025 Core Update. This is something we expected Google to confirm, as I've asked Google this question numerous times and got the same answer each and every time.
The statement came through Glenn Gabe who asked Google about this directly, Glenn posted on X:
Regarding the movement many sites saw starting BEFORE the core update (on 3/6), I reached out to Google about that yesterday to learn more. As I thought, Google explained that the core update was released when the core update was announced, so any movement before that *WOULD NOT* be from the March 2025 core update.
Glenn added:
While sharing about that volatility, I said that Google could have updated a system, or several, BEFORE the core update rolled out. Seems like that could be the case. And just a reminder that Google has always explained they could push "smaller core updates". It was in their documentation for a while.For example, their post about broad core updates used to contain this statement: "However, we're constantly making updates to our search algorithms, including smaller core updates. We don't announce all of these because they're generally not widely noticeable. Still, when released, they can cause content to recover if improvements warrant."
Here is a screenshot from that post:
As expect, the volatility prior to the March 2025 core update was unrelated to that specific update. But yea, Google is always making changes that they do not announce. Not that it matters, we cover both the confirmed and the unconfirmed updates over here.
I will say, even after the initial March 2025 core update volatility I reported on, it still seems relatively calm for a core update. At least so far...
Forum discussion at X.
