August Core Update Helping Small Websites? No!

Following the Helpful Content Update (HCU) which rolled out in September 2023, a very significant level of small websites, and small businesses, were negatively impacted by this update.  It appeared, once again, that Google was favouring, even more than before, large, established websites in search results.

The Core Update that followed in March of this year was also quite extreme, with no recoveries visible from the HCU update, and it led to probably the biggest response from the SEO community that I’ve seen in years. It ultimately forced Google to create a feedback form when the update was finished to understand what was potentially wrong with the update and the search results.

The response from Google was that for the next core update, they would look to better surface the smaller websites, which often have far superior content to the more authoritative websites, but after two weeks of the update rolling out, there has been no sign of this. Of the impacted websites that we monitor, not one has recovered. If anything, the latest core update has further cemented the authority of the larger websites in the search results.

It could be said that Google has broken the web as it continues to hoard traffic and distribute the rest to select websites. It there was ever a moment to consider diversification of traffic sources…it’s now.

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