The March 2025 Core Update Has Completed its Rollout

As of 27 March, the March 2025 core update is officially complete, exactly two weeks after its release on 13 March.

This core update was the first, and definitely not the last, of the year. We anticipate many more to come after Google revealed that there would be ‘more updates, more often’ at the Search Web Creator Conversion Event held in October last year.

Here are all the details we have about the update.

What Was the March 2025 Core Update?

This core update was a global core update that targeted all different types of content.

As always, no specific details were given regarding this update, other than that it was designed to ‘better surface relevant, satisfying content’ and is part of their focus on improvements throughout the year to ‘surface more content from creators’. 

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How Did the March 2025 Core Update Affect the Search Results? 

As expected, volatility in the SERPs was high and began to pick up a couple of days into the rollout, on 15 March. 

Image credit: Search Engine Roundtable

A few SEOs began to speculate that the rollout had begun before its office launch, with some sites seeing a drop in traffic around a week before its release.

Dhiren Mulani commented on Google Search Central’s X post announcing the release of the update:

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However, SEO Consultant Glenn Gabe, reached out to Google who confirmed this wasn’t the case, and that changes can happen at any time because Google is constantly making updates to its search algorithms. 

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A Timeline of Google’s Core Updates

Google releases core updates multiple times throughout the year to ‘make significant broad changes to [our] search algorithms and systems’.

Here’s a timeline of the last two years: 

• The March 2025 core update started on March 13 and ended on March 27.
• The December 2024 core update started on December 12 and ended on December 18. 
• The November 2024 core update started on November 11 and ended on December 5.
• The August 2024 core update started on August 15 and ended on September 3.
• The March 2024 core update started on March 5 and ended on April 19.
• The November 2023 core update started on November 2 and ended on November 28.
• The October 2023 core update started on October 5 and ended on October 19.
• The August 2023 core update started on August 22 and ended September 7.
• The March 2023 core update started on March 15 and ended March 28.

It will be interesting to see how many core updates Google will roll out this year. 

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What to do if Your Site is Negatively Impacted

If you notice a drop in traffic or rankings, there’s no immediate need for concern. As we mentioned, volatility in the SERPs will be high for a while and it’s not unusual to see some movement - negative or positive.
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The best thing you can do if you’re hit is continue creating helpful, reliable, and people-first content. Your site may well bounce back after the rollout has completed. If it doesn’t, or you’re concerned about your website’s rankings, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.