August 2024 core update: dates, what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

Google announced the August 2024 core update on 15 August 2024. Its Search Central post said the update was designed to show “more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.”

Google said the update takes into account feedback from some creators and others over the previous few months, and that it aims to connect people with high quality sites, “including small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content.” It added that the update also aims to better capture improvements sites may have made. At the same time Google updated its help page on core updates with more in-depth guidance.

When it rolled out#

The Google Search Status Dashboard logged the release on 15 August 2024 at 07:58 PDT with the note that the rollout “may take up to a month to complete.” It finished sooner: Google posted on 3 September 2024 that the rollout was complete as of that day, a total of 19 days. No other confirmed ranking update overlapped it.

What is known about its impact#

Google did not publish site-level impact figures for this update. Its own framing is that core updates “don’t target specific sites or individual web pages,” and that pages which move down aren’t necessarily bad; other pages may simply serve the searcher better. Google also said the work on smaller and independent sites is an area it would keep addressing in future updates. Treat any percentage attributed to this update as a third-party estimate.

What site owners should do#

Google’s post pointed site owners to its updated core updates help page. That guidance sets out the practical steps:

• Confirm the rollout has finished, then wait 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 several 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 a date range spanning July to September 2024 and compare clicks for the week before 15 August with the week starting 4 September. Look at Web, Image, Video and News search types separately, as Google recommends. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every confirmed update with its dates, so you can rule out other rollouts before attributing a change to this one.

Related updates#

• The March 2024 core update was the core update before it.
• The November 2024 core update was the next one.