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

What Google changed#

The March 2023 core update was a broad core update. Google did not publish a Search Central blog post for it, and its Search Status Dashboard entry records only the release and completion. Google’s general description of core updates is that they are “broad in nature, and don’t target specific sites or individual web pages,” and that they are designed to keep delivering “helpful and reliable results for searchers.”

Nothing Google published ties this update to a specific signal, content type or industry. Any claim that it targeted one is not sourced to Google.

When it rolled out#

The dashboard says the incident began on 15 March 2023 and that “the rollout was complete as of March 28, 2023,” a 13-day run in US/Pacific time. Its release entry notes that “the rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete,” so it finished inside Google’s own estimate.

The release entry itself is timestamped 22 March 2023. That is because the dashboard only gained its Ranking area on 21 March 2023, as Google noted in its dashboard announcement post, so the entry was posted a week into the rollout. Use the incident dates, not the entry timestamp.

No other confirmed update overlapped it. The February 2023 product reviews update finished on 7 March 2023, eight days before this one began.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no impact figures for the March 2023 core update. Its core update guidance says pages that move down “aren’t necessarily ‘bad’”; other pages may simply serve the searcher better. Treat any percentage attributed to this update as a third-party estimate, and check its method.

What site owners should do#

Google’s standing guidance on core updates 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, reliable, people-first 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 a range spanning February to April 2023 and compare clicks for the week before 15 March with the week starting 4 April 2023, one full week after completion. 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 a nearby rollout before attributing a change to this one.

Related updates#

• The September 2022 core update was the core update before it.
• The August 2023 core update was the next one.
• The February 2023 product reviews update finished a week before it began.