Algorithm Update Timeline

August 2026 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

June 2026 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

May 2026 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

March 2026 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

March 2026 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

February 2026 Discover update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

December 2025 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

August 2025 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

June 2025 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

March 2025 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

December 2024 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

December 2024 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

November 2024 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

August 2024 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

June 2024 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

March 2024 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

March 2024 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

November 2023 reviews update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

November 2023 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

October 2023 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

October 2023 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

September 2023 helpful content update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

August 2023 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

April 2023 reviews update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

March 2023 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

February 2023 product reviews update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

December 2022 link spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

December 2022 helpful content update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

October 2022 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

September 2022 product reviews update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

September 2022 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

August 2022 helpful content update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

July 2022 product reviews update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

May 2022 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

March 2022 product reviews update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

Page experience update for desktop — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

December 2021 product reviews update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

November 2021 core update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

November 2021 spam update — a Google Search ranking update confirmed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

Google confirmed that the July 2021 Core Update rolled out from July 1-12.<span style="background-color: t

Google’s Danny Sullivan confirmed that an algorithm update targeted at fighting spam was rolling out to search results.

Long-awaited Page Experience update has started rolling out. ‘‘Page experience won’t play its full role as

Google simultaneously announced the June and July 2021 Core Updates. The June Core Update reportedly rolled out from June 2-1

This new search ranking algorithm update was designed to reward product reviews that share in-depth research, rather than thi

Three weeks after roughly 40% of Featured Snippets mysteriously disappeared from SERPs, they returned to their previous level

MozCast registered a 40% day-over-day drop in SERPs with Featured Snippets It was their lowest point since 2015. These were r

Google has updated passage ranking which went live on February 10, 2021 for US/English queries. Google initially estimated th

One day after Google announced the end of the December Core Update rollout, MozCast measured moderately-high rankings flux at

Google announced a Core Update that appeared to roll out quickly, with the bulk of the impact hitting on December 3rd. Some s

Google claimed that the bulk of the indexing and canonicalization bug(s) had been fixed by around October 14th.</

Google confirmed an indexing and canonicalization bug starting in early September. Dips were detected in indexed pages on Sep

Rank tracking tools suggested a significant update, with MozCast measuring 101°F, but no update was confirmed by Google.

SEOs reported massive ranking changes for a few hours on August 10, which then seemed to disappear. Google later confirmed a

While no algorithm update was confirmed, a Google rep confirmed an indexing bug affecting Disqus comments that would be fixed

Google announced a Core Update which caused heavy rankings flux from about May 4-6. This was the second core update of

Multiple tools registered very high ranking flux for a few days. Google reps said that this was not a Core Update, and some d

Google announced that URLs in Featured Snippets would no longer be appearing as traditional organic results, in line with Goo

Google rolled another core update in line with

Google confirmed that the BERT natural language processing algorithm was rolling out internationally, in 70 languages.

Google upgraded their algorithm and underlying hardware to support the BERT natural language processing (NLP) model. BERT hel

SERP trackers registered multiple days of ranking flux, with MozCast showing early signs on October 2 and peaking at 98°F

Google rolled out another core update. It </spa

Ranking trackers and webmaster chatter registered a week of heavy flux that was later dubbed the "Maverick" update by the sea

Google pre-announced a "site diversity" update, claiming it would improve situations where sites had more than two organic li

Google pre-announced a "core" update, but with limited details. Sites impacted in previous core updates seem to have been aff

Two days in a row, Google confirmed indexing bugs. The first bug reportedly was preventing new content from being properly in

Google confirmed a bug that dropped pages from the search index around the weekend of April 5th. Most sites recovered soon af

Google confirmed a "core" update, stating it was the third major core update since they began using that label. <span

For one day, Google showed anomalous page-1 counts, with up to 19 organic results. These appeared to be related to <sp

After a relatively quiet December and January, tracking tools detected heavy ranking flux, with MozCast reaching 103.4°F.

MozCast hit 103.1°F, and webmaster chatter and other tracking tools indicated high algorithm flux. Google did not confirm

Tracking tools and webmaster chatter indicated heavy algorithm flux, and MozCast spiked to 109.7°F. No confirmation from

MozCast temperatures hit 107.6°F, but Google would not confirm any significant changes.<a href="https://www.s

Google confirmed a "broad core algorithm update," with wide reports of massive impact. It rolled out over the period of about a week, but peaked on August 1-

After warning users of unsecured (non-HTTPS) forms months earlier, Chrome 68 began marking all non-HTTPS sites as "not secure." <a href="htt

Although the chatter between algorithm trackers and webmasters indicated huge changes in the rankings, Google did not confirm

Six months after it had been announced, Google launched a mobile page speed update and made page speed a factor for the ranki

Google moved the videos from organic-like results using thumbnail images to dedicated video carousel, which resulted in a sha

Although the chatter between algorithm tracking tools and webmasters indicated huge changes in the rankings, Google did not c

Testing longer snippets with 300+ characters for a few months, Google rolled back the majority of snippets to the previous li

MozCast caught a broad algorithm change that peaked on April 17 and continued for about a week. Later on, Google confirmed a

Google announced that mobile-first indexing

Google started displaying zero organic results and the "Show all results" button on a small cluster of Knowledge Cards includ

A sudden spike in rankings was observed in many different tools around February 20, and they went back to normal quickly. Goo

After testing search results for more than two years, Google started to show long meta description tags in many results. So,

A considerable drop in Featured Snippets was observed over a few days from October 27 to 31. Since Google added many panels f

With Chrome 62, Google started to display an unsafe warning to users on sites without an SSL certificate. Even though it was

Google officially launched a job posting portal and started listing 3 job posts in search results. Data of these posts are dr

Mozcast and other tools observed major spikes on the days following May 17. It is possible to say that it continued for month

According to MozCast 10K track, half of the first page of Google organic results was HTTPS in mid-April. It is possible to sa

Google rolled out a broad update which has been reported to have a great impact in SEO communities. Gary Illyes jokingly name

There was a period of intense algorithm update starting on February 1 and peaking on February 6. It was unclear whether this

Google developed a penalty to punish aggressive interstitials and pop-ups that can harm the mobile user experience. Google an

Multiple Google trackers reported a considerable amount of fluctuation on December 14-15. The temperature was reported by Moz

MozCast indicated a huge increase on November 10 and 18 at 106 degrees. There was a great industry chatter on both dates, som

It is unclear whether this update was Penguin or something else. However, it is told to be the second phase of Penguin 4.0 an

Although the exact roll-out date of the update, devaluing harmful links instead of punishing sites, was not confirmed, it was

Google announced the Penguin update that had been expected for almost 2 years. It is stated that the new Penguin update is no

MozCast observed a 50% drop in the image search results and stated that the changes in universal results opened up organic po

1 year after the original "mobile-friendly" update, Google released the ranking signal boost for mobile-friendly sites to ben

MozCast and other Google weather trackers showed a week-long pattern of algorithm activities that were historically rare.

Google made major changes to AdWords removing right-column ads entirely and rolling out 4 blocks on top as ad blocks in searc

Not confirmed by Google, this update emerged as a result of the changes in MozCast data and some serious changes in the ranki

Multiple tracking tools including MozCast reported huge changes in rankings. Later on, Google confirmed it as "core algorithm

Google made a major announcement, revealing that artificial intelligence and learning were a part of the algorithm contributi

Google reported that this update was more like a Panda data refresh and that it could take months to become fully influential

After many large-scale ranking changes, Google recognized core algorithm change that impacted "quality signals". This update

By a rare move, Google announced an algorithm update in advance revealing that mobile rankings for mobile-friendly sites coul

Several SERP trackers and many webmasters reported major changes in Google SERPs. The speculations on the update ranged from

Google's local algorithm expand called "Pigeon" has expanded to the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. The original updat

Google authorities said that Penguin would be one of the continuous updates. Although the exact date was not clear, the flux

More than two years after the original DMCA/"Pirate" update, Google launched another update to fight software and digital med

More than a year after the previous Penguin update (2.1), Google launched a Penguin refresh. The update had less impact than

Google made a change that seemed like a display change to News box results but later announced that they had expanded some ne

Google announced an important Panda update that involved an algorithmic component. They speculated impact at 3-5% of queries

Following the drop in authorship photographs on June 28, Google announced that the authorship mark-up would be completely rem

After months of speculations, Google announced that the sites which had taken safety actions (such as ssl certificate) would

Google shook the local SEO world with a new update that dramatically changed the local results and modified how to handle and

John Mueller made a surprise announcement on June 25 that Google would drop authorship photos from SERP results. These drops

Less than a month after the Payday Loan 2.0 anti-spam update, Google launched another major iteration. Official announcements

Google confirmed a major Panda update that included algorithm update and data refresh. About 7.5% of English queries were off

Right before Panda 4.0, Google updated the "payday loan" algorithm that specifically targets spammy queries. While the exact

The chatter between algorithm trackers and webmasters increased substantially on March 24 and 25. Some said that a new

Google updated the page layout algorithm. Launched in January 2012, this update penalizes sites with too many ads above the f

As Matt Cutts claimed at Pubcon Las Vegas event, authorship mark-up was removed from 15% of the results over a month.<

Google did not confirm an update and they claimed that they avoided updates around holiday times. MozCast reported a rise in

When the DNS errors in Google Webmaster tools were reported, many Google trackers observed unusual activities. Google did not

After four and a half months, Google launched another Penguin update. According to 2.1 data, this was probably a data update

Although it was announced on September 26, Google claimed that this update rolled out a month earlier. MozCast's data on Augu

Google added a new type of news query called "in-depth articles" to make news queries more permanent and have detailed conten

Major sudden changes were recorded by MozCast on Friday (105˚F) and other resources indicated significant activity over the w

According to MozCast data, KG entries increased by 50.4% overnight.

Google confirmed a Panda update but it was unclear whether this was one of the updates launched once every 10 days or somethi

Matt Cutts from Google tweeted that they would have a multi-week update between June 12 and "the week after July 4". The natu

Although it was not a real Panda Update, Matt Cutts made an important announcement at SMX Advanced revealing that Panda was s

Payday Loan is an update that targets spammy sites. The update was announced on June 11 while Matt Cutts claimed that it woul

Named by Google as "2.0", the impact of the 4th Penguin update was only moderate. The nature of the changes was unclear, but

Google launched an update to control the diversity of domain crowding in SERP. The timing was unclear but it seemed that it w

Many reports on an algorithm update were published around May 9. (It was verified by high MozCast activity.) The nature of th

Matt Cutts pre-announced a Panda update at SMX West, revealing that it was the last Panda update before it would be integrate

Google announced the first official update of 2013, claiming that this update would impact 1.2% of the queries. This update d

Google launched another Panda update right before Christmas. They officially called it a "refresh" and it impacted 1.3% of th

Google added this feature to non-English queries as well: Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian

After some confusion, Google launched 22nd Panda update but later it appeared to be data-only. This update came on another un

Google rolled out the 21st Panda update about 5.5 weeks later than its latest Panda update. This was a smaller update, offici

Google had announced a page layout algorithm change update in January. It's unclear whether this update was an algorithm chan

While Google claimed that the next Penguin update would be major, a small Penguin data update rolled out impacting only "0.3"

Google published a list of monthly search highlights. 65 updates for August and September included 7-results SERPs, Knowledge

After the EMD update, a quite major Panda (algorithm+data) update officially impacting 2.4% of the queries was released. As t

Google announced that their way of handling EMDs would change. This led to a large-scale devaluation. And reduced the p

Google rolled out another Panda update that was data-only.

Google rolled out another Panda data update with a fairly small impact. Since the numbers in Panda 3.0 series ended with 3.9,

Google made changes to the top 10 results for many queries, limiting it to 7 results. The research showed that this change ro

After the summer gap, the June and July Search Quality Highlights rolled out as one large pack. This pack included some major

Google announced that the sites with repeated copyright violations would be penalized. It was announced to be effective as of

A month after Panda 3.8, Google rolled out a new Panda update. There was a flux of rankings for 5-6 days. Google claimed that

Google sent out a great number of unusual link warnings through Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console). However, they then a

Google rolled out Panda data refresh which included no algorithm changes. It had less impact than Panda 3.7.

Google rolled out an update which impacted less than 1% of the queries. The data showed that the impact of this update was hi

Google released monthly Search Highlights in May with 39 updates. These include major changes such as Penguin improvements, a

After the Penguin algorithm update, Google rolled out its first targeted data update. The Penguin data was told to be process

As a huge step for semantic search, Google introduced "Knowledge Graph". Knowledge Graph provided supplemental information ab

Google published the details of 52 updates and the changes to Penguin update related to them in April. This update included 1

After the Panda 3.5 update, Google rolled out a new Panda update. The impact of this update was fairly small.

Google finally rolled out "Webspam Update" which was later named "Penguin". The Penguin update included some spam factors suc

Google rolled out a Panda data update during a busy week for algorithm. The changes made it difficult to measure the impact,

After a few webmasters reporting ranking shifts, Google explained that a mistake had been made and some domains had been acci

Google rolled out a series of updates including 50 changes in March. These changes included the confirmation of Panda 3.4, an

Google announced another Panda update on Twitter. Google's public statement suggested that Panda 3.4 would impact 1.6% of sea

Google shared a small part of the search quality meeting. For everyone interested in algorithms, this video provides a lot of

This local update more localized the organic results, and more tightly integrated local search data. The exact timing is unkn

It was a small update and rolled out 3 days after the 1st anniversary of Panda update. It was an unprecedented lifespan for a

This pack had notable changes including many image-search updates, several refresh updates, and a Panda update.

Many of the highlights released here were related to speed, currency, and spelling mistakes. Another significant announcement

Google updated the page layout algorithm to devalue sites related to the ads above the fold. It was suspected that the previo

Google confirmed a Panda update but stated that no changes were made to the algorithm. It was unclear whether this update fit

Google announced a radical change to personalization. Google+ included social data and user profiles in SERPs. Google also ad

This update pack included image search landing page quality detection, more relevant site links, richer snippets, and relevan

Google released its second 10-pack of updates, and announced that these packs would come out each month. The updates included

After Panda 2.5, Google entered a phase called "Panda Flux", where updates were more frequent with less impact. Some market a

Matt Cutts released the last 10 algorithm update for more transparency. While the timeline was unclear and most of the update

Google announced a refresh update which would have an impact up to 35% of the queries. This update primarily impacted time-se

Google announced that the search queries would be encrypted for privacy reasons. Unfortunately, it disrupted organic keyword

Matt Cutts tweeted: "Expect some Panda-related flux in the next few weeks." and gave a number of about "2%". Other minor Pand

A month later, Google rolled out another Panda update. Details of the changes were unclear but some sites reported large-scal

This was not an update but a very interesting announcement. Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that Google made 516 updates in

Google introduced rel=”next” and rel=”prev” features to solve crawl and duplication problems caused b

After a short experiment period, Google officially released expanded site links mostly for brand queries. At first, there wer

Google rolled out an international Panda update both for English queries and non-English (except for Chinese, Japanese, and K

Webmasters said that Google rolled out a new update. However, it was unclear whether new factors were introduced or Panda dat

After a few social media failures, Google spurted with Google+. Google+ became popular among those who wanted to share conten

Google continued to update sites and data affected by Panda, and version 2.2 was officially introduced. Panda updates were se

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft jointly announced their support for a combined approach to structured data. They also created se

Google appeared to have made some changes again to this update which was called "Panda 3.0" at first. The details of these ch

Google rolled out this update to all English queries worldwide. New signals were integrated including data of site users bloc

As an answer to the competition of major social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Google introduced the +1 button. Cl

Impacting almost 12% of search results, this significant update targeted sites with inadequate and poor content, and other qu

Google rolled out an update for a better content attribution. According to Matt Cutts, it impacted 2% of queries.

The harmful SEO activities of Overstock.com resulted in a Google penalty. JCPenny had also been penalized for similar activit

A magnifying glass icon appeared on Google search results, allowing visitors to quickly preview landing pages from SERPs. Thi

Google and Bing confirmed that they used social signals including Twitter and Facebook data to determine ranking. While many

After New York Times revealed how DecorMyEyes, an e-commerce site, was ranking based on negative reviews, Google made a rare

Google Suggest was improved and Google Instant was launched, showing search results while the query was being typed. This wor

Although it was not a traditional algorithm update, Google started to allow the same domain to appear multiple times on a SER

After months of testing, Google rolled out the infrastructure of the "Caffeine" update. "Caffeine" not only boosted the raw s

In late April and early May, webmasters realized significant drops in their own long-tail traffic. Later on, Matt Cutts confi

Although "Places" rolled out in September 2009, it was only a part of Google Maps. The official release of "Google Places" re

Twitter, Google News, newly indexed content and several other sources were integrated into SERPs in real-time. Sources includ

Google released the preview of a major infrastructure change that would speed up crawling, expand index, integrate indexing,

SEO experts reported a major update that seemed to favor large brands. Matt Cutts called Vince "a small change", but others s

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo announced that they supported "canonical tag". This tag sends canonicalization signals to search

With changes to its logo and a-box homepage, Google introduced the "suggest" part. The "suggest" part was the suggested searc

Major complications were experienced by Google at the end of March and early April, with the details unknown. Some suspected

The update was named "Buffy" in honor of Venessa Fox leaving Google. While no one could understand what changes were made, Ma

Google dramatically changed its format, integrating traditional search results with news, videos, images, and local informati

An update was expected in December because of some case analyses of major ranking changes in November, but Google announced t

During 2006, Google seemed to make some changes to how the main index number and filtered pages were handled. Although some f

Technically, "Big Daddy" was an infrastructure update. (more like Caffeine) It rolled out over a few months and finalized in

Google launched a series of updates that mostly targeted low-quality links including reciprocal links, link farms, and paid l

After launching the Local Business Center in March 2005 and encouraging businesses to update their information, Google merges

Some call Gilligan a false update. Webmasters observed some changes but Google said that no major algorithm updates were made

Google allowed webmasters to load XML sitemaps through Webmaster Tools by bypassing traditional HTML sitemaps. SEO experts ha

Unlike previous personalization attempts which required custom settings and profiles, "personalized search" that rolled out i

"GoogleGuy" (someone like Matt Cutts) announced that Google was rolling out "about 3.5 changes in search quality". No one was

Webmasters noticed the ranking changes but the details of this update were unclear. Some said that "Allegra" affected the "sa

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft collectively introduced "nofollow" feature to fight spam and control outbound link quality. Nofo

Although not an algorithm update, it is an important event in Google history. Google sold its 19M shares, and raised 1.67 bil

Google released a variety of changes including major index expansion. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) raised attention to link

The Austin update completed what the Florida update was missing. Google continued to take harsh precautions against deceptive

This update created a map for the updates made (probably in the SEO industry). Many sites lost ranking and business owners go

To index more documents without losing performance, Google split off some results into "supplemental index". The methods of h

With the Fritz update, monthly Google Dance finally ended. Assuming a marginal approach, Google started changing the index da

This was the last usual monthly Google update, with a continuous update process emerging. “Ever flux” replaced "G

While many changes were observed in May, the nature of Dominic was unclear. Google bots “Freshbot” and “Dee

Google started taking extreme precautions against some basic link quality issues. These precautions included massive linking

Boston was the first-named Google update announced at SES Boston. Actually, Google was targeting a major monthly update and t

Before the "Boston" update, the first-named update, there was a major shuffle going on in the fall of 2002. This update

In order to guarantee SEO arguments lasting for years, Google launched its first browser toolbar and Toolbar PageRank (TBPR)