Google’s John Mueller answered a question about whether the March Core Update was finished and whether it’s okay to begin fixing things in response to the update.
Core Update Question On Reddit
The person asking the question wanted to know if the core update was finished because they’ve experienced a 60% loss in traffic and they were waiting for the update to finish before fixing things to make it rank again.
“People advised me against making drastic changes to my blogs while the core update was ongoing. Unfortunately, I’ve experienced a significant loss, about 60% of my traffic, and now I’m determined to restore these numbers.
Do you have any tips for me? It appears that my pages, including (purchased) backlinks, have been most adversely affected!”
The advice that the Redditor received about waiting until after an update is finished before attempting to fix things is good advice… most of the time.
March 2024 Core Algorithm Update Is Not Over
Core algorithm updates are changes to the entire range of algorithms that are a part of search. The ranking part of the algorithm is a part of what constitutes as Google’s Core Algorithm. And the ranking system itself is made up of multiple other components that are related to understanding search queries and webpages, weighting different factors depending on the context and meaning of the search query, relevance, quality, and page experience, among many other factors.
There are also spam related systems such as RankBrain. The core algorithm is comprised of many things and the March 2024 Core Update is a particularly complex one which may explain why it’s taking so long.
John Mueller responded by first acknowledging that the March Core Update is not over yet.
He explained:
“No, it’s not complete. It’ll be labeled complete when it’s finished rolling out.”