August 2023 core update: dates, what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

Google released the August 2023 core update on 22 August 2023 and announced it on the Search Status Dashboard without a dedicated Search Central post or any description of the systems involved. Its standing definition of a core update applies: “significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems” designed to present “helpful and reliable results for searchers.”

Google’s core update page explains the effect with an analogy of a top-20 restaurant list that gets revised over time. Restaurants that move down the list “aren’t necessarily ‘bad’”; there are just others that now make the cut.

When it rolled out#

The Google Search Status Dashboard logged the release on 22 August 2023 at 10:37 PDT, noting the rollout could take up to two weeks. Google posted on 7 September 2023 that the rollout was complete as of that day, a total of 16 days.

No other announced update overlapped it. The September 2023 helpful content update began on 14 September 2023, a week after this rollout finished, so the two can be separated by date.

What is known about its impact#

Google did not publish impact figures for this update. Its framing is that core updates “don’t target specific sites or individual web pages.” Treat any percentage you see attributed to this update as a third-party estimate, and check its method.

What site owners should do#

Google’s standing core update guidance is the relevant advice, since it published nothing specific to this update:

• Wait until the rollout has finished, then at least one more full week.
• Compare the week after with a week before the update began, not with the rollout window.
• A small drop (position 2 to 4) needs no drastic action; a large, sustained drop warrants a site-wide self-assessment against Google’s helpful content questions.
• Avoid quick fixes. Improve content in ways that help readers; delete content only as a last resort.
• Recovery can take months and may not show until a later core update.

How to check whether it affected you#

In Search Console, set the Performance report to cover August to September 2023 and compare clicks for the week before 22 August with 8 to 13 September. That window is a day short of the full week Google recommends, because the helpful content update began on 14 September. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every confirmed update with its dates.

Related updates#

• The March 2023 core update was the core update before it.
• The October 2023 core update was the next one.
• The September 2023 helpful content update followed a week later.