September 2022 core update: dates, what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

The September 2022 core update was a broad core update. Google did not publish a Search Central blog post for it, and the Search Status Dashboard entry records only “Released the September 2022 core update” and its 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.”

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 12 September 2022 and that the rollout was complete as of 26 September 2022, a 14-day run in US/Pacific time. The entries are timestamped 22 March 2023, when Google added ranking updates to the dashboard.

Two other updates sit close to it. The August 2022 helpful content update finished on 9 September 2022, three days before this one began. The September 2022 product reviews update ran from 20 to 26 September 2022, entirely inside this rollout, and finished on the same day.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no impact figures for the September 2022 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 whether it separates this update from the overlapping reviews update.

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, compare clicks for the week before 12 September 2022 with the week starting 3 October 2022, one week after completion. Look at Web, Image, Video and News search types separately, as Google recommends. If only review pages moved, the product reviews update is the likelier cause. 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 May 2022 core update was the core update before it.
• The March 2023 core update was the next one.
• The September 2022 product reviews update overlapped it and finished the same day.