Adam Hafez
Key takeaways
- The Search Status Dashboard dates the rollout from 25 May 2022 to 9 June 2022.
- Google lists the duration as 15 days and published no impact figures for this update.
- It was the first confirmed core update since the November 2021 core update.
- Google says core updates do not target specific sites or individual web pages.
- Google's guidance: wait a full week after completion before comparing data.
What Google changed
Google released the May 2022 core update without a separate explanation of what it changed. The Search Status Dashboard entry says “Released the May 2022 core update.” Google describes core updates in general as “significant, broad changes” to its search algorithms and systems, meant to keep results helpful and reliable as content on the web changes.
When it rolled out
The dashboard records the rollout from 25 May 2022 to 9 June 2022, a total of 15 days, all times US/Pacific. The dashboard entry and its completion note (“The rollout was complete as of June 9, 2022”) were added on 22 March 2023.
No other confirmed update overlapped it. The previous confirmed update, the March 2022 product reviews update, finished on 6 April, and the next, the July 2022 product reviews update, began on 27 July.
What is known about its impact
Google did not publish impact figures for this update. Its core update guidance says these changes “don’t target specific sites or individual web pages,” and that pages which move down are not necessarily bad; other pages may simply serve the searcher better. 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 sets out the steps:
- 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 a range from May to June 2022 and compare clicks for the week before 25 May with the week starting 17 June, a 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 overlapping rollouts before attributing a change to this one.
Related updates
- The November 2021 core update was the core update before it.
- The September 2022 core update was the next one.
The evidence
- Type
- core update
- Started
- 25 May 2022
- Completed
- 9 June 2022
- Rollout
- 15 days
- Confirmed by
- Search Status Dashboard
Sources
- 1.May 2022 core update (incident) - Google Search Status Dashboard, March 22, 2023Primary
- 2.Google Search's core updates and your website - Google Search CentralPrimary
Frequently asked questions
When did the May 2022 core update start and finish?
The Google Search Status Dashboard records the start on 25 May 2022 and completion on 9 June 2022, a 15-day rollout. The entry was added to the dashboard on 22 March 2023.
Did Google say what the May 2022 core update changed?
Not in any detail. Google describes core updates as significant, broad changes to its search algorithms and systems, aimed at presenting helpful and reliable results, rather than changes aimed at particular sites.
How long does recovery from a core update take?
Google says some changes take effect in a few days, but it can take several months for its systems to confirm a site now produces helpful content, and sometimes the effect waits for the next core update.
About the author
Founder, UpgradIQ FZC LLC
Adam Hafez works on technical SEO and search measurement: how pages get crawled, indexed, ranked and now quoted by answer engines. He founded UpgradIQ, which reads Google Search Console and GA4 to tie ranking movement back to the changes that caused it. He publishes what the data supports and states the limits of it.
- Technical SEO
- Search Console and GA4 measurement
- Answer engine optimization
- Structured data
The briefing
Only what actually changed in search, delivered in full by RSS, Atom or JSON feed.
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